Homeschooled: East students help out younger siblings with their online school work

In the midst of the disorder caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many adults have to continue to work and students continue online school assignments and classes — making it difficult for many families to continue schooling with their kids.

It’s challenging for younger children to work on activities while the parent’s attention is on their work calls and duties — leaving some older siblings the role as the teacher.

Junior Anna Heide has had to help teach her brother Jackson finish his last quarter of first grade. Both of her parents work, leaving her at bat to help her brother with schoolwork. 

“Everyone has their own stuff to do, and we have to take care of Jackson and kind of run the house,” Heide said. “… so it’s pretty tough because we all have a full agenda that we have to balance with everyone’s schedules and needs.” 

Even though they get all of the assignments off of his school-provided iPad, Heide tends to print the assignments out so that he can work better on paper. Doing work on paper helps Jackson learn how to write much easier than he would on his iPad.

“First grade is a big year because you learn how to read, so that’s a lot of taking the time for him to sound out words and learn how to write,” Heide said. “And the hardest part is you don’t realize how hard it is for him to read such simple words, so you have to be understanding.”

When Jackson isn’t learning how to read or write, Anna and her sister try to keep him entertained and fill time by playing on the trampoline, baking and going on walks with their dog. Since he doesn’t have his usual recess time and school friends to play with, he has enough energy cooped up to power the house for a week.

Sophomore Sydney Beck has also spent time helping her seventh grade brother, Will Beck with his school assignments as well. Currently Sydney is helping her brother write a paper for his English class, but normally she’s just there to assist if he gets stuck on a math or science problem. 

Sydney finds teaching Will to be pretty easy due to their close age gap, especially since she has done several of his assignments before. She has also helped him figure out how to work classes online and taught him how to log into online sites like Zoom.

To Sydney, teaching her younger brother isn’t a burden — it’s valuable time that they get to spend together. But they’re still looking forward to the minute that the shelter-in-place order is lifted.

“It’s good bonding time with my brother but obviously doing seventh grade work wouldn’t really be my activity of choice,” Beck said.