Covid-19, virtual learning

We are almost 8 month into the pandemic of Covid-19, and still don't really know everything there is to know about this virus.

I live in a rural area in Wisconsin with my family. When I say family, I'm usually talking about my 7 children, and ten grand children. Two of my children are under the age of 18. Our 16 year old daughter, and our 13 year old son.

When this Country was faced with a lock down in March of 2020, my oldest daughter had just moved back in with us, along with our two grand children, getting out of a toxic marriage. It was spring break, when they moved in, and my grandkids where exited to finally be able to take a school bus to school, something they had never experienced, because they always lived to close to the schools they had to attend. My grand sons birthday also was coming up on April 3rd, and he was so exited to start school and celebrate his birthday with new friends. During spring break, the lock down followed. Easter came and went. The spring break of 2020 turned into a 6 month vacation for our kids and grandkids, because nobody knew how to handle a crisis like this, especially not our government in Washington.

Nobody knew, had a clue, or even an idea, how schools where supposed to open up after summer break. I was hoping that in a length of 6 month, the school board would have been able to come up with a few plans, for whatever scenario of Covid-19, followed after the summer break. I listened to the scientists, not our government, or whatever misconceptions the white house was spreading around. I was hoping that our school district would come up with a solution about re-opening the schools, how to teach the children and keep them safe at the same time.

But I had a feeling that something was going into a different direction as I had hoped for.

I do have to explain that my husband and I are truck drivers, by profession. In September of 2019, my husband was diagnosed with final stage of Multiple Myeloma, a cancer for which there is no cure as of yet. I was driving until the end of October of 2019, when my husband suffered a heart attack, about an hour, after I got home. Four weeks later, he slipped on Ice and broke 4 ribs. At this point, he needed care 24/7. I had to quit my job, to take care of my husband. He had to apply for temporary disability, but we didn't get a check from them until February of 2020.

I watched the numbers and the spread of Covid-19 very closely. I think I should mention that we bought our house in this Village we live in, 11 years ago, and we've learned that the family trees in this town, go straight up, without branching out and that we, among a handful of others, are the only independents in this village. Everyone else is a full blown Trump supporter.

Of course we got all their thought's and prayers, because we did make friends since we've moved here. But thoughts and prayers don't pay no bills, something that is essential in this country, because the majority who lives in this town, lives off of Social Security, but rejects "Socialism" in it's entirety.

Believe me, I have a lot to say about our life, but since I started with virtual schooling, I have to get back to that.

About a month, the end of July of 2020, before school was supposed to start again, I started looking at the schools website, to see what plan they had come up with. Since Wisconsin has a majority of Republicans in the Supreme Court and the Senate, they kept overruling every mandate our Governor, a Democrat, had put out there for the safety of Wisconsinites, and opened up the bars, the malls and everything else that should have stayed closed to keep everybody safe.

I started to renovate and re-purpose the smallest room in our house into a class room. Our daughter, who had moved back in with us and our grand kids is responsible to test all the migrant workers in the State of Wisconsin for Covid-19. I had to make room for 4 children and myself in that "classroom" to make sure that everyone was able to have a seat and all the supplies needed for a school day. It took me 2 days to get it done and set up.

One week before school started I had to go and pick up my kid's and grand kids chrome book. I was hoping to find instructions as to what program they where going to use in order for me to get a jump start on getting to know the curriculum. But there was nothing. No note, no instructions, nothing. I knew that the first day of school, I had a 220 mile round trip to Milwaukee with my husband, to drop him off at the hospital that would do his stem cell transplant. I wasn't going to be there with my kids and my grandkids to have a grand opening of virtual learning.

The first day, my grand sons chrome book didn't work. It took the school one week, to exchange it to another one. In the meantime he had overdue projects piling up. Up until the first day of school, we didn't know what program was going to be used, or how to use it for that matter. Schoolwork/homework was getting posted on "schoology", but no explanation as to how to take pictures and upload art work, that had to be done on a piece of paper. It took the teachers days to get back to us, when we had questions, but in return, the teachers where fast in threatening with truancy, if work wasn't turned in at the time they had posted on the website.

The school gave us a 2 week grace period to get familiar with everything. But still, there was no instructions, no nothing to go with the virtual learning.

Now, due to my husbands cancer, we both where home. I knew of single moms who had to go to work, but where scared of sending their kids to school, due to rapid soaring of the virus in our community. They where left with needing to go to work, to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head, but at the same time, being at home, with their underage child, to help them do their school work.

There was, and there is no help for anyone in this country. Thoughts and prayers is what someone can receive from their friends and neighbors when a pandemic like Covid-19 strikes. As I said before, Thoughts and prayers don't pay the bills. Thoughts and prayers don't stop an eviction when you can't work to pay the bills. Thoughts and prayers are well intended, but they don't help in the real world, where the people who come to collect money don't care about those thoughts and prayers you received, but want to garnish your wages if you don't pay, come and take the car that you need to go to work and make money, come and take the house you live in and leave you homeless. There is something so wrong in this country that I don't even know where to start.

It's almost the end of the first quarter in virtual school. After me, and other parents have been complaining long enough, the teachers are finally available once a week to speak face to face to our kids and grand kids about school. Up to that point, those kids thought they where learning with a computer. It's important for our kids to know that there is an actual teacher on the other side of this chrome book who cares. A teacher who sets up their curriculum and who is there to help them succeed.

It's a big change for all of us. Covid is not going away. We have to learn, we have to adjust. The worst thing we can do is to ignore. Ignorance will make this whole ordeal just last longer.