How to Proactively Prepare for Distance Learning

By Jenny Anderson, NEW YORK TIMES. Normally we rely on teachers and counselors or coaches and people in our communities to help us spot problems, then identify solutions. We try to build a village to not have to do everything alone.

But now the village is quarantined, and it’s increasingly clear it’s still on us to try and make the best decisions for our families — though it feels like there are 200,000 new choices to make every day.

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I’m just overwhelmed,” said Lynn Cooper, a real estate agent and mother of two in Reston, Va. Her children, ages 11 and 13, are in Fairfax County Public Schools, and she had planned to send them back for two days a week until the district shifted to an online-only start to the year. “How can I set them up to be successful learners? I am flying blind, I am uncertain, and I have a lot of anxiety,” she said.

There’s one key difference between schooling in the spring and this fall: We should rely on teachers and counselors more. That’s not to say parents won’t have a major role to play as translators and messengers to teachers, who will not be able to develop as deep a relationship with our child through a screen as they would in a classroom setting. READ MORE HERE