Bay Area Parents Juggling Work, Parenting And Home Schooling During Shelter-In-Place
(KPIX 5) -- Parents all around the Bay Area are getting a crash course in home schooling their children. Online learning is slowly starting to be implemented at some schools, but not all are on board yet.
Parents worry about the kind of impact distance learning will have on their child's education as they try to juggle work, parenting and now teaching. For the first time, school was in session for Axel Johnson and his parents online.
"My level of respect for teachers went up so much higher today," said Axel's father Andrew.
Mom Nicole Johnson says, "Not only do we have to make their life fun and be their protectors but now we are teaching them as well which is a really a challenge for a 1st grader."
The Johnson family says their first distance learning experience went smoothly. But for the LaBarbara family from Novato, they say it was a disaster.
"We ran into challenges of just being engaged and I have a 4-year-old was not interested in what the 6-year-old was doing. I eventually found her with the scissors the 6-year-old was using, cutting her own hair in the bathroom," said mom Ally LaBarbara.
The stress of teaching has now been put on the plate of many families across the U.S.
Schools like Branham High in the Campbell Union High School District are still scrambling to move their education online. The families KPIX spoke to praised the school's program, but are worried about how much learning will actually get done.
"My concern is he's not going to get everything out of first grade that I want him to or he wants to," said parent Nicole Johnson.
And if Governor Newsom's prediction that schools may be closed for months becomes a reality, households with both working parents wonder how long will they be able keep up with online school, especially Ally LaBarbara, who is a pediatrician on the frontlines of treating sick patients.
For her, it's not if but when the coronavirus will strike her family. "I think we have all accepted that at some point we will all get sick," she said.
