By Understood
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In this episode of Quarantine Chronicles, we are back with the Thomas family in South Carolina. The family discusses why they made the decision to homeschool, and walks us through what a typical homeschooling day looks like for them.
Homeschooling has helped parents Marlin and Essence notice and identify Makenzie’s reading challenges. Essence, who is teaching her on a daily basis, shares the strategies she has found to help Makenzie overcome these struggles.
Marlin and Essence share how they are trying to create an environment where Makenzie can thrive this school year, while also juggling full time jobs.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:00
– Just getting started with our daily routine for the day,
00:03
and, the student is at the desk right now.
00:06
– I am not a student, I am your daughter.
00:10
(soft music playing)
00:16
– I know me and my wife made the,
00:18
mutual decision not to send Mackenzie back out,
00:20
even when schools reopening,
00:22
– bmb.com.
00:23
It’s just, you know,
00:25
the safety aspect (indistinct),
00:27
granted that a lot of parents had to make the hard decision
00:29
to send their child back to school because, they have to go
00:32
to work, single parents, who can’t afford daycare,
00:36
you know, it’s a struggle,
00:37
– bmb.com
00:38
– across the board.
00:40
You know, I also thank God for my wife ’cause she
00:41
is really the one
00:43
who spearheaded the schooling.
00:44
You know,
00:45
(soft music playing)
00:47
– It is Sunday,
00:48
and I am in the process of grading Mackenzie’s work
00:52
from the previous week,
00:54
We used a program called Time4Learning,
00:56
and we try to turn to turn it around,
00:58
so, I could show you.
00:59
(soft music continues playing)
01:04
– Now, we are doing, homeschooling, not the virtual.
01:08
So this is strictly on us,
01:11
We are her teachers.`
01:13
Yeah, so we’re teaching her, her lesson as she goes,
01:17
the math, the science and the language arts,
01:20
and the reading,
01:22
and so on. And that aspect, yeah,
01:24
we are her teachers right now,
01:26
we don’t have any contact with,
01:29
the virtual portion of school that, we inquired about it,
01:34
but we felt like this would probably be the better way
01:36
for her, my wife did the setup,
01:39
and when she’s not here,
01:40
I take over, to help her in her lesson,
01:44
and, you know, get her caught up for the day,
01:46
and then vice versa, we swap out.
01:50
Like I said, we’ve set up, an area in our formal dining room
01:53
as the school setting, you know, to try to engage her into,
01:57
to knowing that, this is school now,
02:00
these grades count.
02:01
– It can get stressful,
02:03
especially if mom, forgets to do,
02:06
write out the lesson plans for her dad’s book a week.
02:09
So, sometimes I forget,
02:11
sometimes I’m like, she got this spelling today,
02:13
and I’m calling from work, I’m like,
02:14
I forgot to put it on the board.
02:16
So that is one of the struggles,
02:17
is definitely the time management
02:20
that comes along with homeschooling
02:22
and, making sure that your lesson plans are, together,
02:26
making sure you are in compliance
02:28
with your state regulations and laws.
02:30
Well, good morning?
02:32
It is 5:30 in the morning over here at East Coast Time.
02:36
I am up, on the way out the door,
02:39
but before I go out the door,
02:41
I’m trying to make sure that Mackenzie
02:44
and Marlin have no issues, doing homeschooling today.
02:48
– We usually like to give her,
02:49
in-between assignments.
02:53
(indistinct) Know, when she take a break,
02:53
maybe like a 15 minute break,
02:55
then we’ll let her get the iPad,
02:57
do a little paint,
02:58
we set the timer, okay, boom, timer’s off.
03:01
Let’s get back to work, it’s a little incentive,
03:03
you know, we give her little breaks
03:04
in every night in between things.
03:07
So, she’s just not feeling the straight rush
03:10
of, everything she got to do all at once.
03:13
So yeah, I can definitely say that we’ve noticed,
03:16
you know, some things that we hadn’t noticed,
03:18
because like say, you know,
03:20
we get it from the teachers and it’s, their version,
03:24
of what they see, versus us actually seeing
03:28
it for ourselves firsthand.
03:29
So, I think that’s an advantage that we have now, with her,
03:33
my daughter, she likes to rush and, we tell her like, look,
03:36
you don’t have to rush, take your time,
03:40
read through it, and you know, try to understand.
03:43
So we do think that, an area that she
03:45
is trying to get better in, she’s needing some help.
03:49
It’s like the comprehension reading,
03:51
trying to comprehend what she’s reading,
03:55
understanding what she’s doing, by her being home now
04:00
and we’re actively their teacher,
04:02
We recognize that,
04:05
by just what the answers to some of the things she’s,
04:08
putting down, I can just see how her,
04:10
where her answers correspond with what she is reading,
04:14
don’t match up, and we know why,
04:16
is because, like I said,
04:17
she’s probably really not understanding what she’s reading.
04:20
So that’s where we’re working with her as well now,
04:23
you know, it’s just like,
04:24
The One-On-One,
04:25
is a learning process, you know,
04:27
– Bmb.com
04:28
– and she would have to go through it in class,
04:29
I’m assuming so, but I’d say what,
04:32
the way things are going now,
04:34
we actually realized that firsthand, by her being here,
04:38
so that’s just one of the things that, you know,
04:40
she will get better at, with some practice.
04:43
– (indistinct)
04:45
That’s it, she do speak, pretty much fluent Mandarin.
04:48
– (indistinct)
04:50
– I think Mandarin, because they do a lot of, I say,
04:55
you say, so when they do the, I say,
04:58
you say, it’s right up her learning style because,
05:03
she’s a verbal learner, you know, she learns by hearing.
05:06
So I think it plays right into,
05:09
what exactly that she needs as a learner.
05:13
(indistinct)
05:20
– It’s amazing to me how she picked this up,
05:23
from out, I walked past the door and I looked
05:24
at my wife, I’m like, what have you taught her about?
05:26
I have no clue,
05:28
(laughs)
05:29
They seem so happy, I have no clue,
05:33
I can’t decode that. So she has the capacity,
05:37
I’m not worried about that.
05:39
She’s smart as a whip. She just,
05:42
you got to slow it down a little bit, coffee breaks.
05:44
(laughs)
05:46
– (indistinct)
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
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