If you told me fourteen years ago I’d be doing math and social studies at the dining table and fixing meals in the middle of the day for a schooling-at-home child, I would have laughed. I laugh today, too, but it is more the release of a suppressed hysteria. Here he is: web cam, Chrome book, cords, speakers, charger, headphones…is there a book or a notebook in sight? How about a writing implement? Okay, yes! I see some wrinkled biology notes that came off the printer. And here he is: Online Boy, first week of freshman year at our local, “virtual” high school. And this must be first block in Zoom school. In our county we were given a choice of in-person or online learning this fall. Will chose to start 9th grade online and we supported his decision. So instead of a boy and a bus, a hurried breakfast and a blow-outta-here that’s been going on in our home for over twenty years, there’s this half-dressed teenager set up for the day in the dining room.

We did this once before. Ellie, first and second grade. A kindergarten teacher had put on Aladdin in the classroom in the first weeks of school and later that winter, The Polar Express–and pushed me right over the fence. I thought, if a class of five year olds is so done with your show that you can be airing full-length feature films in the classroom, then I need to find a more intentional learning environment, where they do kindergarten things like picture books and finger paint, instead of pirating the activities better suited to sleepovers and family movie nights. Yes, I am aware that public school has functioned as the well-being police for years–hot meals, health screening, vision checks, winter coats–things you might expect from the home front. But do we believe our children are also deficient in their movie and video watching? Do we lament that, if not for the schools, children would miss out on breakfast, lunch and Disney? Beefing up the screen time Little Johnny won’t get at home? If the schools really are a replacer, then by that formula kids would be read to constantly and be put outside to run and play, for here are the real deficiencies. And practicing their penmanship, learning grammar and making papier-mâché. Can you tell why my name is “Old School”? Can you tell I have an axe to grind? But seriously. “Do you want me to come into your living room with some writing instruction or a math lesson?” I ask the students when I sub–they, eyeing me annoyed and reluctantly tucking their electronics into backpacks. Separation of school and family room. “Then don’t do here what you do there.” I don’t say this but I think it: A cell phone is not a school supply.

My homeschool opened the day I came home from the hospital with William and tried my hand at teaching Ellie to read while nursing a newborn while the crockpot simmered and the laundry hummed. There were no goats or chickens in the backyard, but I did “bake” bread in a 25-year-old bread maker that made me feel all self sufficient-like. Sophie bailed after five weeks. Our apple tasting project and “Jamestown Day” on the patio weren’t enough to convince her that schooling at home is where its at. “Hands-on” was fine but “bus bound” was better. For all of her ancient five years, we had driven by the little elementary school on our way to and from church and nursery school and she knew, she just knew that there was something bigger and better going on out there, calling her to be a part of it. It was like an educational dog whistle that only Sophie could hear. No, she did not want to try the apple butter. So one day in mid-October she donned her favorite mulberry print dress and a backpack bigger than she was, and she walked to the end of our driveway and got on the bus. It was quite a de-enrollment, but Ellie and I kept on for two years of Saxon math, a top-rate history curriculum, and the most old-school language arts program I could find. (It used a Primer!! Guess no one could scoff when she got to high school with a Lexile score of 1570). Even then, our home straddled two worlds: the happy dining table math drills and the public school forms, Friday folders, and letter of the week.

My disclaimer then is the same as it is now: I did not keep (or try to keep) them home to ride my fancy helicopter. I did not keep them home for religious reasons or some elitist notion that we could or would rise above any of the filler, fluff, social scene in their part or behavioral issues ours (Although on second thought…!), or with the preposterous notion that I could do better than trained professionals, or any of that. I kept them home for the singular value: your education is important and I mean it. No time to waste, to moment too small, no classroom with walls going to rob us of learning for the joy of learning instead of the assessment and test. Obviously, with Sophie’s stubborn march to the bus, my lofty ideals soon petered out and there I was, laying in the glue stick and signing up for room mom. Many times over the years have I mused on the decision, regretted it, wondered…. What if? I see the homeschooling families coming into the library by the dozen this fall–laundry baskets, milkcrates and totes in hand to truck out their little piles of books. They tell me Covid-19 put their home-work-school lives into one big cooker where you can’t have it all, and you are forced to decide which world, so they picked school. I envy and admire those who have taken it for real.

By the time we got to the big decision for Will–home or public kindergarten, not only could he “cut with scissors” a readiness marker, he could “climb over chairs,” “hide from teachers,” and “jump off swings” in mid air, behaviors that alarmed his nursery school but which surely signaled his readiness for the mother of all conformers: public school. He was then, as now, too young for the skills in his bag–ability and aptitude being so close and yet so far apart I could not see it. Why did I push so? Why did he go? Was it the economics of our family or its darkest hours, where an older brother at the time threatened to bring down the house. Second son, not yet five, I sent him to the safest, most reliable place I knew: kindergarten. Many times since then have I wished for a repeat, a do-over. Going against the grain (and, oh boy, is there a grain in public education), I tried for a repeat in kindergarten, first grade, sixth grade and then started to consider alternate education. I wished it. I prayed it. I failed to act on it. And look what Amazon just tossed across our front step: a global pandemic. (Should I go online and tell them I’m not happy about their delivery–I should, shouldn’t I?). Talk about the baby and his bath water. I’m telling you, I prayed too hard for this global disaster. It has cleared the family calendar, laid waste, destruction, and life-changing redirections…and yet, with our changed educational life it has played with our problem and pushed it about, offering if not a solution a curious alternative that may just work.

We chose online, in the form of a learning pod–two friends, three teen boys who rotate to the different houses to do their studies together. They’re not in any of the same classes. Their interests, personalities, habits, weekend pursuits are all different. In that way, this really is a microcosm of the public school classroom. But they are buddies. And though there isn’t much more alarming or exasperating (or messy! My word…) than a boy on his way to manhood, there’s also something incredibly sweet. We didn’t do it for reasons of Covid or fear of germs. Bill drives a bus of masked and socially-distant children every morning and afternoon! One in 500 were carriers on the first day of school, and I’ll bet that number is up now. I get three or four sub posts a day already, for absences in the in-person classroom. Like it or not, we are part of that pool through Bill’s come and go. I did it because it was the last train leaving before the world fell apart and I wanted to be on something that would work, that would stay. That would last. No matter what. Like a hermetically sealed little capsule or the CD I thought to go in for right before they dropped rates to mattress levels (as in, it would make more under your mattress), I wanted to be aboard something that would not end. Living through a senior year with Sophie, where every last, little good thing was plucked, pulled, cancelled, taken away, or even worse–never proposed–I couldn’t do that again. So when Will told us his choice was “virtual school” we jumped behind him 100%. Just don’t put those two terms together too closely. Oxymoron.

For a wanna-be homeschool mom, the arrangement suits me fine. For one, I can keep an eye on in- school boy in some pretty handy ways. Boy not so happy about that feature. Used to horrify Will I could just email a teacher or even step down the hall with my sub badge on. Now I can see how she decorates her living room. As a sub in the middle school, there were days I wished for some particular hell-raiser’s mom or dad to walk in and take a seat in the back. Now they can. For two, I get to have a house-full in the days of our dismantling. We’ve had five children cycling through three upstairs bedrooms for 22 years, with the last four begun last month. Wild panorama, old Billy and me. And to keep the roof on (literally!) we take our nest apart one piece at a time, and sell it for scrap. The playhouse? Swing set? Trampoline? Various nets, balls, bikes and outdoor toys? All gone and sold on Craigs List. I would list their childhoods, three perfectly good and charming childhoods, but they are not in “gently used” condition. They are riotously and deeply lived, leaking glitter, spattered in mud and magic, showing wear in great excess, and most folks prefer the new ones. But in this autumn of our family–Even the tent has gone down!–I welcome the noise, smells and stuff of boy–even electronically schooling boys, which, admittedly, is a cheap imitation of the real thing. Our daytime home seems–well, filled up again. So much for the emptying nest and the intentional purge around here–this venture has put me back in the tetherball aisle at the store, hunting basketballs in our woods and laying in school snacks like it was 2012. How do you get enough of the last child you might forget you have until he’s too old to want to be around you anymore? Invite his friends over. And feed them. With teen boys in the house the kitchen is like, Whaaa…? I was just settling in for a long winter’s nap! And for three, it’s just fun. Boys are fun. These are really, really nice boys. Like Will, they are each the “end of the line” last child, so maybe their homes and families are going through a similar re-adjustment, as well. And who doesn’t need more noise, mud, sweat, bodily noises, sheepish grins, inane audacity in their world? I tell you what. This pandemic. We are all like to hibernate. These boys, they call us to our posts.

As part of the agreement, we set up three “study spaces” in our respective homes where the boys can school, supervise loosely, fix them lunch, encourage them to go outside for breaks and then in the afternoon drive them home. We call it the “Pod” or the traveling trio, the three amigos, and a variety of other names (Fortnite 101??). Thanks to one mom, we all have spirit wear. Going into it, we all have high expectations. They’re not in the same classes, so one might be be raiding my craft stash for pipe cleaners and packing peanuts to construct a 3D model of the cell, while another is conjugating Latin verbs, while another is reciting the First Oath of Enlistment. Two are registered for an ROTC class which surprisingly made, so at blocks two and four, two of them will have PT on Tuesdays and Thursdays and will suddenly UP! from their desks and fly out the front door to run a mile. On another day, these young upstarts will be fully uniformed and belting out creeds, codes and commands like, Where is my son and what have you done to him? That class, and Will’s band class, is a “hybrid,” meaning some virtual, some in person, so the class is run like a “Zoom meeting” with the students not physically present. Now instead of Night at the Museum up there on the “Smart” board they’re showing: your classmates. Must be a wild experience for that teacher, a retired Navy officer they call “Chief,” to have half a dozen of his charges running masked around the high school track and the other half doing the subdivision sprint all over town. Same with band. Interesting concept, that. The logistics of pulling together 30 instruments from (literally) all over the county for sustained symphonic playing–?! Makes Mr. Holland’s Opus look like the Vienna Philharmonic. Maybe all that’s needed is a little name tweaking on the course Will so looked forward to and couldn’t wait for, to “Not-in-Concert” Band. But like Sophie wishing she could go to UVA to get locked down in a dorm rather than home, their wishing instincts are a little hobbled. Today Will finds out that the teacher ordered instrument “covers” (for the in-person students)–and he’s excited about it.

Our homeschool has worked hard to make the most of kitchen table curriculum: the lunch ladies put effort into our midday meals. As my sister says, you can’t just “wing it,” not even once, when you have teen boys in the house. I get all smug and ducky on my bulk stock of frozen pizza rolls until Will tells me the other two moms are “way” better cooks. No offense, mom. For after school “recess” before I drive them home, the boys play badminton, or skateboard on the driveway, or sit in the sunshine on the back patio and chuck acorns at each other. I know one of them does have gym, but this must be the sitting down version of gym. I’m just glad it’s not Driver’s Ed, since that is usually the other half of PE in our schools and not something I would be able to pull off virtually (as in, Here kid, take the keys and make sure you turn on video…)

Our boys are not the only ones learning this fall. It’s a wide-eyed look at education that I only suspected as a parent or sampled as a sub, that is now being conducted at the same table I served cake for his 5th birthday and will soon produce a Turkey. Now their best efforts are going on right around the corner. Frankly, I don’t always want to look closely, afraid of what I might find. I ask the boys very candid questions–about their teachers, their class time, what they’re up to and what they’re supposed to be up to. What’s the ratio of games to classwork? What is your math teacher doing with the block and what are you reading? When’s your next writing assignment? They look at me sheepishly, their answer an education in itself. At least they, too, are aware of the–shall we call it “lag” time?–in online learning. Back in the day it was thumb twiddling. I’m impressed with our students’ accurate assessment, both in what is being put out and what they, themselves, are investing. Their self awareness, which is no small thing for a teenage boy who will blame the cat for stuff not done. After all, it was the Father of education, Heraclitus who said that the starting place of all learning is nosce te ipsum, or “know thyself.” So this is a typical morning in week three. They all assure me it’s typical. I’m pretty sure I saw a movie on one of their laptops last week, a practice HCPS has adopted for years whenever they tested, have finished reviewing for a test, are thinking about testing, are about to go on a holiday break, are in the last two weeks of school, or any other time that SOL-trained teacher has run out of something more inspiring to do. Another of my pupils, in English, goes up to get his book and dabbles in reading it. I can tell from the frequency of keystrokes, however, that reading is not all he’s doing. Another, in computer programming, assures me he’s done what the teacher assigned and so has time to sample the–er, product….and the other, in business marketing, assures me it’s the most boring class he’s ever taken in his life and there is plenty of time to do “other things.” You know, I did not see that one listed in the course offerings, but I’m pretty sure plenty of online kids are registered for “Other Things” this fall.

As one of the administrators in our little home-schooling pod I’ve been forced already to consider some pretty big questions — like, how do you educate the whole child from the waist up? How do you coax a teen to keep his video on when NO one else, mom, nooneleseinthewholeclass has his on? So tell me, virtual teachers seeing my dining room in disarray–What is the answer? So captivate and load these students on information, lore, and content that they can’t give so much as a glance to cell phone or their second screen (nearby preloaded with Minecraft or a game aptly named Among Us)? I’ve had teachers like that, leave you breathless with your learning, pinging from idea to idea till you think your head (or in some classes, your heart) will bust. But that was then and this is now. Can you captivate a second millennial? And what then–the seat work and in-class assignments become homework–which would require still more screen time and trespass into already-threatened family time and parents’ supervision? Or, back to what we got here–the assignments are contained within a school day and occupy about as much space in a young mind as an acorn in the ocean.

I don’t know what I expected with our homeschooling pod. Yes I do. I know what I wanted. A final crack at their educational lives. One last go at this boy who started too soon. I pictured our book study around relevant topics and absorbing novels, our discussion group that could reset years robbed of show and tell and fed power points and “closed” notes. I pictured coming aside their learning for one last lap, teaching them how to write a business letter, a resume, and the handy stuff–how to cook stuff, sew stuff, walk the dog. I would have stopped at folding laundry, I promise. But I was elated with the prospect of young willing minds in my home again. To ask them the words we no longer have time for: “So…what do you think?” I wanted to take over the school’s replacer role and put in what is really missing: sustained intellectual discourse. Instead, the “Zoom School” takes up half the day and 100% of their 20-minute attention spans. If they came with willingness and curiosity it is quickly dulled by the downtime they are given to complete work during the block for classwork. And yet the day is consumed. The only “finishing school” going on here involves taking temperatures and asking nearly grown men to wash their hands and put the seat down, rounding up paper plates they’ve left behind on the patio, and pestering them to turn on video and off games.

I realize that the days of the singular focus are long gone and I really am a dinosaur for looking for them. We are all, adults and students, all going about our days like spatter, little bits and pieces sprayed out over a great area hoping to find meaning in a single moment of it. Area, wrote Emily Dickinson, is no test of depth. I know this generation has grown up with a second screen, that they can’t even conceive of a world without a split focus: cell phones at the dinner table, texting while dining, dating, driving even–and the entire subliminal message of social media: there is somewhere else more important/fun/cool/compelling than your present time and place. I see that too at the library–with the littlest ones–mom, dad, always with one eye on the child and one eye on the cell phone. A generation of students have been reared by a parent half-present; how could they possibly model anything else?

Still — the pandemic has forced our hand on things in danger of extinction. Individual accountability in learning for one. Like the happy home school at my house, they’ve had to separate students, pull apart desks and put them in straight little rows–probably a lot like the structure of a classroom in 1975 (!) where we sat, socially distant and utterly responsible for our own learning. Lots of outdoor time for two. You can see the little clusters (not too close) of kids out on blankets and towels in the sunshine, reading away or working at a teacher’s instruction. Our pod is a little too plugged in for a classroom au plein air, but I put their lunch outside and have after school recess. And since that activity involves riding skateboard and scooter off some structures of dubious heights and stability, who knows–maybe we’ll do a break out (oooh, bad verb choice, that) and have an enrichment on First Aid. Hasn’t the moment always been the best teacher, anyway? Which reminds me, I’ve got an oven full of pizza rolls on a timer and some fruit to wash and cut. Maybe we’ll have Jello for dessert. Apple butter, anyone?