CORONAVIRUS IS NOW AFFECTING EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN

Newport News, VA- Newport News public schools will be learning virtually these first nine weeks including Kindergarteners and preschoolers, so teachers are insisting that parents become more involved in their child's education to help them be successful in their new journey.

Kindergartens and preschoolers require a little more attention and structure than children in upper grades in a learning environment to prepare them for high education as they develop. It will be hard for students to engage and understand their work in an online setting if parents aren’t involved with helping their children maneuver through their online school system education because teachers' interaction with their students have been altered in this new learning environment.

“ We do feel that the parent will need to be more involved with school, they will need to be around to help access links, assignments, quizzes, discussions, read some things, basically everything so they can help the child learn how to find things, complete and submit them,” said Lauren Mayo, a kindergarten teacher at Jenkins Elementary School.

On August 5, 2020 the Newport News School Board voted on students attending school virtually for the first nine weeks due to the Coronavirus. The school will be providing loaner devices for families who have childcare needs and has extended the date to request devices to August 19th. Parents will have the choice to keep their children home for the second semester if the schools open back up.

According to blog.brainbalancecenter.com the average attention span for children ages 4-6 is 8 minutes to 18 minutes. Newport News teachers will be having 15 to 30 minute live sessions for specific core subjects. That’s about 12 minutes per subject that children will be struggling to pay attention which causes some to wonder how effective virtual learning will be for young children.

Children also need to have hands-on interactions while learning like matching sight words. This helps with determining whether they are a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner but it will be hard to identify that if they are taking online courses.

“It will take some time for all students to get use to this way of learning and pay attention for extended periods of time. However, we have accounted for that. The first couple of weeks of school have been designed for building relationships and stamina, establishing norms and learning to navigate Canvas,” said Lauren Mayo a kindergarten teacher at Jenkins Elementary School.

Classes will be held through a learning system called Canvas. This program will allow teachers to hold live instructions with students, post assignments, quizzes and discussions. Depending on the age and grade of a student, the program will also allow teachers to chat with parents as well as students.

Although this form of learning is new to students, it is also new to teachers. This way of teaching can be foreign to some teachers and can cause doubt on their teaching abilities due to their lack of knowledge on technology.

“I for one am not technology savvy so my question is will I be effective in helping my children navigate Canvas when I am not good at it? ” said Lauren Mayo, a kindergarten teacher at Jenkins Elementary School.

Kelly Stewart, the principal at Jenkins Elementary School gave all classroom teachers a book called Relentless to help guide and encourage them through the school year to fit their school of the year.

“Virtual learning is a new experience for us all so the book encourages us to not give up when things get hard or don't go as planned. We should always be ready to go one more round for our students,” said Lauren Mayo, a kindergarten teacher at Jenkins Elementary school.

Even though some parents and teachers are comfortable with this adjustment to virtual learning, some parents like Tara Banks, a Newport News native wasn’t quite fawn of this idea and chose to homeschool her child.

“Homeschooling has always been my plan, but when the Coronavirus surfaced that encouraged me even more to homeschool my son.” said Tara Banks a Newport News native.

When homeschooling your child, having a lesson plan is very important but also being able to differentiate the role of mom and teacher which could be hard for some.

“The hardest part is being taken seriously as a teacher from your child and taking Jayce seriously as a student.” said Banks.

To make her child feel as if he is actually at school, Banks has created a daily schedule for her son and a space in her home that she calls the “free play area” that is dedicated for her son to have fun but also learn through play. She creates a weekly preschool planner to organize what she will be teaching and a daily report sheet that gets updated daily which encourages her son to do better in class.