Alana Bremers, parent and ResearchILD Intern, explains why she moved her children from remote learning to homeschooling.
Spring of 2021
“Making the decision to homeschool was a challenging decision, but I left the public school system for a number of reasons. Attending in person was not going to work for my family because, as small business owners, we needed to eliminate the chance of getting sick or even being quarantined during the pandemic. The demands of remote learning were impossible; I felt trapped in my house, until 3:30 pm, every weekday. I couldn’t go to appointments, make client calls, properly entertain and enrich my younger child, or run errands.
Remote learning was invasive. The mess of my house was always on display, my barking dogs were a problem, and my preschooler was a distraction. We were tiptoeing in the house 35 hours a week.
The day-to-day schedule of remote learning was brutal for everyone concerned. The mornings were rough—I had to drag my 1st grader out of bed at 8 a.m. so she could greet classmates for 15 minutes before asynchronous learning began. I calculated she was spending less than an hour actually face to face with peers or her teacher during the seven-hour school day. She wasn’t learning new information. Due to a teacher shortage, the first graders were combined with the kindergarten class. In kindergarten, she had been well ahead of her class, and now it seemed like she was repeating kindergarten again. I found I had to supplement the seven-hour school day just to make sure she occasionally learned something new. She reads chapter books but was still practicing phonic sounds in class. The only educational part of her day were online programs I could just as easily administer without being trapped in my house for the school days.
For these reasons I became a homeschooler.”
- Alana Bremers, ResearchILD Intern
SMARTS Executive Function Curriculum: smarts-ef.org
Research Institute for Learning and Development: researchild.org
The Institute for Learning and Development: ildlex.org