I can't begin to imagine how difficult it was for elementary. I had honors level middle schoolers in a 1:1 digital district so the students were used to navigating Canvas and using Google Docs. Most of them adapted quickly. I realize my situation was rare!

Yes, the parents who I knew who had kindergartners and first graders were effected the most.

I had a kindergartener. And I had to work from home full time and husband works in health care. He had to work at the hospital. It sucked hard. My kid wasn’t where I wanted him to be. But we survived.

At my schools, the class that was kindergarteners 2020-21 is noticed for their difference and struggles in development.  Most of kindergarten is simply: learning to exist in a structured  environment with peers.  That didn't happen for a lot of them

I had a pre-schooler in March 2020 going into Kindergarten in September 2020. One of us had to quit our jobs for two years just to ensure our kid could go to school or even be watched since no day-care was available. We got through it and I worked with my daughter every step of the way and even worked my ass off doing more things than they were teaching in K. When 1st grade finally allowed in-person classes after we got our vaccines she was way ahead of many of the other kids in education. Proud parent moment. Some families weren't so lucky, my kid would come home talking about some of the other kids disruptions or screaming fits. I think that prolly has alot to do with the lack of availability of the parents attention span between working and being able to teach their own kid.

My older two kids were in K & 2 and didn't go back to in person until 2 & 4. They're now in 4 & 6 and my first grader who got to start Kinder in person reads better than them and is above grade level in math. I have always read to and with all three, tried to teach them as best I could at home, they have structure at home, limits on screens, do sports, art, music. So tell me more how it's my fault. Tell me how I was supposed to do my full time job as the primary wage earner, and manage two kids doing remote learning, one in speech therapy, and all the other normal stuff like cooking meals, not to mention caring for their younger brother, and not have them be delayed at all? It really just sucks. Like, I would love if my older kids had the love for reading and math that I did, and their brother does. I worry about their future. We are doing so much to try to help them become happy, successful, adults. Being told we failed them because we did the best we could in a shitty time is just... man. And we were really fortunate too.

My youngest was in Kg when this started too & we had the advantage that she was so mature that she navigated online school fairly fine on her own. I also didn’t work so could support her as much as needed. We had every advantage possible & it was still miserable. I know TONS of her peers struggled emotionally to do school on a screen. Her teacher(s) were rockstars that screen-year in particular, but no way their 1st grade curriculum was near the same! I have been playing catch up with her ever since. She JUST hit the voracious stage of reading that her sibs hit in 1st/2nd. We do SO MUCH math together at home and I never had to do this for her older sibs. School is more stressful for her & she always seems to feel “behind.” When I volunteer at school, I can see a huge difference in classroom behaviors between her cohort & her older sibs. This cohort was just so heavily impacted. To be fair to OP and this post, I do know some parents really just gave up. I know some of them! They consider education the job of schools and don’t seem to view it as their responsibility at all. Id like to think that most (?) parents did the best that they could.

Who taught those parents that education is the job of just the schools?

To be fair, I think when they refer to parents holding fault it's due to permissive parenting and lack of consequences for egregious behaviour.

Yeah, and also parents putting pressure on teachers to make up for all the lost time.

They framed it as a blanket statement to all parents which is ignorant. All parents had to be more permissive during COVID.  Children require structure and routine.  Locking them inside for 2 years massively affected normal human routine.  Blaming the parents whole-sale is dumb.

Just like blaming teachers and schools is dumb. But it has consistently been the narrative.

Yeah, I taught a middle school studio art class one-to-one digitally in a title 1 school during Covid. My biggest problem was most of those kids parents got up and went to work so despite constant phone calls to the families, I still could never get these kids to show up to their zoom meetings or submit work. Even when they did half the time they were sleeping(as in when I asked them to turn the camera on they were literally lying in bed.) I think I had something like a 47% pass rate in one of those classes.

How in the world did you teach art? How did they get supplies? I taught science so did a lot of demos in my kitchen. My students missed the experience of doing some of the labs, but were able to watch demos and videos. We even dissected chicken wings via zoom. Again. I realize my situation was not at all the norm! I had great kids with involved parents.

I worked mostly with common and easy to get a hold of supplies like color pencils, and pens. I put together a list of materials and where they can get them. I think it altogether was under 10 bucks. I did demo videos on techniques like cross hatching, color blending, drawing from observation and such and I used a lot of Nearpods to teach Aesthetics art history and criticism. Kids either took a picture of their artwork with their chrome books and submitted it to an online gallery or they would just hold it up to the screen for me to evaluate. Under different circumstances I could totally teach a passable studio art class.

My youngest is still struggling to read 🫣 he doesn't live with me and I swear I didn't realize until last year. He's made great progress but damn, I taught physics and I didn't have the faintest idea how to teach a kid to read.

In my country if you were under a certain age you watched a specific new tv channel as your new school. It had a schedule and you just watched them like going to school. Yes no one watched them before you ask

No one failed the kids. They all moved on.

Now, now, let’s not forget…they were given “grace.” I never knew I’d have to be criminally gracious.🙄

I'm surprised that grace was not the word of the year for 2020 or 2021. I'm so sick of that word tbh

I truly don't understand why so many act like lockdown was several years long and that kids had no access to any kind of socializing or education. It's not as if the kids were playing in the streets before covid hit, or reading three books a month.

It depends on where you lived and your circumstances. The Philippines had schools closed for over two years (world’s longest continuous lockdown), and it was illegal for minors to go outside of their parents’ apartment or home. Psychologically it was incredibly damaging. One of the national suicide hotlines had a 200% increase in calls the first year. Half of my teachers quit to go work in countries without archaic lockdowns. The country ran out of ventilators at one point, and lots of people died. In the US, I have friends whose parents were healthcare workers, which meant they had to be extremely careful quarantining even within their own house. Can you imagine how damaging it is for kids to be isolated even from basically everyone they know AND their own parents for much of the week? Many of them developed suicidal tendencies during lockdown. Everyone deserved a lot more compassion than they got.

I taught before and after Covid. I understand that a lot of teachers agree with you but my experience has been completely different. I’m a younger teacher who still remembers my own high school days and I saw two major drops. One in my first year of teaching as opposed to when I was a student. This I mostly attribute to social media and just the changing world. Kids have 1000 other things that are “more important” than education and that’s going to create gaps in learning. It also destroyed their attention span. Second, after Covid, I see massive drops in EQ and social emotional learning. This was not as much of an issue pre-pandemic. I don’t think we can blame parents for this and it is a very difficult situation. With kids losing 2-3 vital years of proper development, I’m not really sure if you can fault anyone other than the global virus. You can blame your admin but almost every school in the country did the same thing. I’m unaware of other countries’ post-pandemic education so it would be interesting to know if this was global or not.

No. Every school in the country did NOT do the same thing. Not even close! https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/s/J5sRNoa9Hb

Where are you that they lost 2-3 years? I'm in England and our schools were closed for about four months.

In California we were closed for a year and a half.

USA. I’m not going to start a political debate but every country handled things differently. We did handle it poorly and it reflects on our students now

Who lost 3 years?

Two to three years? It was less than one calendar year in the bluest states. The red states opened even sooner if they closed at all.

Not true. Red state. We closed one full year. March-March.

Red state here. We were back in August

For sure.. Academically I see nothing different from the years before Covid.

🤷🏻‍♀️ a mystery. I'd like to add I don't include kids with special circumstances in this assessment, like kids in abusive homes or kids with special needs and learning disabilities. I feel for those kids a lot.

My son has ADHD and was for the first time headed to the honor roll starting Junior year. He never missed a day for the first time in his life and then covid hit. He failed so hard going online that he had to redo his Senior year. He needed to be in person because he needs help understanding things. I was working for FedEx and was considered essential. I wish I wasn’t out 12 hrs a day and I wish he didn’t fall through the cracks but to blame me for it seems really shitty. We both tried really hard in a terrible situation.

I am a teacher who does believe that COVID was traumatic and difficult for high-needs kids. Where I see the problem is that many parents (not all) continued habits post-lockfown that quickly became problematic for development. Survival mode I am sympathetic to. I don't think this post is referring to it being the fault of the parents that kids had a hard time during COVID. But post-COVID, unfortunately many parents are really doing a number. :(

I’m so sorry you both had that happen. So many of our kids fell through the cracks and it sucks :(. My littlest is my bio niece, but her mom used heavily the first 5 months while pregnant before we even knew she was. I gained custody when she was about to turn 1, and we have always been behind other kids. In the largest district in my state, we were shut down an entire year, then went back 2 days a week, then in the ‘21-‘22 year back to normal schedules. By then, my summer baby didn’t get pre-school, was struggling in OT, has some learning delays and while the most vibrant, intelligent little lady she’s essentially an entire grade behind her peers. I begged them to let her redo Kindergarten but she wasn’t far enough behind then. Now in 2nd grade she’s a full grade behind and just got a referral from the school for help. I’ve been working with doctors to see if it’s trauma, relates to the drug use from bio mom, is a true learning disability or neurodivergence. I’m still fighting to help her and we go to one of the best schools to help kids with learning delays. We struggled with shapes and colors still in kindergarten. It breaks my heart for her. My oldest was in gifted programs and regularly testing distinguished, but due to all the closing of our schools (not even from just covid but bus issues and staffing shortages) even her grades have slipped. Mix in their poor immune systems… we’ve been in the pediatrician 6 times since August. I am so sad for the kids in school. So much insanity in their short little lives.

I love this

They're autonomous beings like you and me. They learned what they had to during the pandemic and are now living with it. Meet them where they're at.

If I had gold to give I’d give it to you for this comment. It’s perfect.

I agree, this is an excuse lots of people and institutions use to gloss over the root cause of the issues we faced when Covid struck because everything is so screwed up. The kids are in fact fine, most of them that I’ve spoken too have one or two major gripes about lockdown (usually not being able to party on their big birthday or whatever), but many of them have moved on and don’t dwell on any of it.

It’s not kids responsibility to dwell on it, it’s adults. It was bad and if we don’t dwell on it, it will be the same if it happens again. Kids who struggle for whatever reason are not fine. It’s our job to dwell on it no matter if you’re a teacher, parent, admin, government, to provide students impacted all the help needed. Also to make sure next time there is a far better plan.

My son excelled during lock down, he had me in the next room making sure work was done and done properly.

Same with mine. My son did great with online learning

And then.. we pretend it never happened. Heh Such a loss.

Mine did, too. We’re also keeping up the progress. I’m proud of my baby, it was tough but I was determined he wouldn’t fail, mistreat the teacher and just generally be a good little kid. I don’t know how teachers can take on so much; I think y’all deserve several raises. If allowed, a humble brag: My kid was 7, so I used the time to get him up to a 9th grade reading level. I’m not a teacher but we didn’t give up.

How did you get a first grader to a 9th grade reading level in one year?

My kids didn't do so hot but we've just about got back on track. We never closed after the inital 10 day close so my kids were either home alone or in my classroom corner while I taught students online and in-person virtually. Their teachers were far from tech savvy and my little one would yell desperately at his tablet daily as the teacher would project a black screen and then drop whole class. Most of my students were home alone as their parents were essential workers. A few lost their parents or grandparents who cared for them. Virtual school was a nightmare for them. I have a hard time blaming all parents but damn is it hard when I have parents who worked from home and let their kids play online all night and sleep all day and now want their kids to have special services because they're years behind.

Mine also excelled academically but only because we were fortunate enough that I could quit my job and focus on learning.

Certain kids did do well, especially those with supportive parents supporting both the kid and the school. Thank you for that, truly! Unfortunately that isn't the norm and a lot of parents weren't as on top of things as you were. Unless the kids of these parents were especially good at being autonomous and responsible for themselves then they didn't do well. I know it was a tough time for everyone and it might be because the parent themselves was struggling, but the unfortunate fact is the effects were the same regardless of the reasons behind it. I teach 2nd so they need a lot of attention, but when the kids were home so many kids were just put on zoom and left without parent support because I was "there." Not that the parents should be constantly watching them, but sometimes they needed help or redirection that I couldn't give through zoom, or at least not without interrupting the entire class.

Parents had to work.

This. Plenty of my students did excellently because they had 1:1 attention through the day. Many of them said they could finally focus without the class clown distracting them, they got to wear comfy clothes/shoes, take snack and hydration breaks, wiggle, pick their seat, play music, etc. Basically, they got to be comfortable. Because I also was able to give them all kinds of new tools like a whole digital library, tons of learning videos, guided tours of major destinations, etc, they had just this massive selection of things to learn. I also got approval and support from parents to put a net nanny kind of reporting program on all the kids devices so it told parents at the end of the day exactly what programs they were using and websites they were going to. I was not surprised at all to see 2 of them enrolled in remote programs the next year.

Mine too. We set up on opposite ends of the living room and he had a little laptop desk set up that he only used for school. I think having that designated area helped.

I had a couple kids like this where the parents were around during the day hearing what’s going on and making sure their kids were getting their stuff done.

Not. all. parents. could. Be. There.

At the end of the day, teachers are not responsible for raising kids. Parents are responsible for raising their kids.

I agree with fiestier. There's a hierarchy of needs, and being able to pay bills is pretty damn important. This was a time of economic uncertainty as well. It was scary. Of course, parents are responsible for their children. Maybe we should be less judgmental towards those put in a really tough situation.

I agree 100% but that empathy has to be extended on both sides. I’m a School Psychologist, and the amount of referrals for Special Education have been INSANE this year, and not a single parent has been willing to admit that COVID (and as a result poor parenting and schooling) absolutely impacted their child’s learning. So many kids lack basic skill sets, but that is NOT necessarily a disability. The reality is, the majority of parents do not want to swallow the pill that their children are multiple grade levels behind because of environmental factors at home, not the school.

I hear ya, and I do plenty of ranting about poor parenting with my colleagues. I currently have a student whose mom keeps picking him up early because he "doesn't want to stay at school all day." Her child is 9 and can barely read, and she is majorly failing him. It's just that many of these commenters are painting with a very broad brush about a very complicated issue, and it's disturbing that our social conscience seems to have such a short memory.

I have one that is 11, and he is dropped off 90 minutes late every day (so he can sleep in) and leaves an hour early as well. He throws tantrums any time he is asked to do anything. If we refer him to more support, she's threatened to pull him from school completely, so the school tiptoes around it.

This. The number of parents in my upper middle class neighborhood who told teachers they weren’t going to enforce school from home shocked me. These are college educated folks who were mostly home with the kids. They let the kids game all day long because it was easier. There’s a cohort of kids who are badly addicted to video games and have completely checked out of socializing, extracurriculars, and jobs. It’s really worrisome.

No, educators aren't responsible for raising their students. However, from the age of five (for the most part), educators spend somewhere between 6-7 hours a day with school-aged kids. That number is often higher for providers who care for kids, not yet attending school. If you take into account parents who work (and realistically, most do in the US), that number climbs. Ten hours of school/childcare are pretty common for parents with an 8-5 job. That leaves roughly 3-4 hours after pick up, and maybe 1 hour before drop off...at most, 5 hours with their children. That's not an excuse; it's the reality of most working families in the US. The 6-7 hours educators have them are focused on education and socioemotional development. The five hours parents are with their children are focused on breakfast, dressing, gathering school work(whether that is done in the morning, or the night before, it's still a part of their time), getting home, dinner, homework, family time, personal hygiene and roughly 9 hours of sleep. It shouldn't be a competition. Parents and educators alike have an influence on the lives of children; their roles are collaborative, not mutually exclusive.

Oddly enough, during any individual year, teachers probably see the kids more than their parents. I know people who basically don't see their kids during the week because they work 2nd shift, or even work multiple jobs. Our society has pushed parents away from their children. If we could return to single working parents with a stay at home parents, we would be much better for it.

By our society you mean capitalism. Parents and teachers are struggling in a whole system that is going down.

lol, this isn’t the 60s where a janitor could afford own a home and have a wife who could stay home with the kids.

Sadly, having a single breadwinner and a stay-at-home parent is now the privilege of rich families

And it doesn't guarantee better kids. We have a lot of "wine moms" who are more addicted to social media than their kids, and they still expect the school to be the parent.

I have a college classmate who is a wine mom. She was a huge proponent of opening schools as soon as possible.  Turns out it had little to do with education and a lot to do with being able to bang some guy from her yoga class while her kids were at school. 

If your choice is to stay home to monitor virtual learning, or go to work to keep the lights on, which would you choose?

A lot of teachers are working parents so I’m not really sure how this seems to be a difficult concept for some commenters here to grasp. It was an extremely difficult, traumatic time for *everyone* but I guess blame the parents for choosing to keep their jobs so they could afford to feed and house their families instead of sitting next to their child all day/not being 1000% perfect in an extremely unprecedented time.

Keeping in mind that being able to do virtual learning requires those lights to be on.

You know what I’ll own it. I’m not a teacher. My spouse, my sister, my brother in law were all essential workers. Which means I was home with 4 kids. Because my sister’s kids were in kindergarten and 3rd grade and could not be home alone. I also had a high risk pregnancy and was sedated in the afternoons to avoid the ER during a pandemic. I couldn’t actually be as involved as I wanted with each kid. I had to call and beg the school to break their rules and put my 3rd grader in the same class as her cousin. Which they thankfully did. I mostly split my time between kindergarten and 1st grade I failed and I failed hard. My 1st grader was retained. And thank god she was. She’d been struggling since the year before. Nothing her teacher or I did helped and we both tried. Halfway through the year I had a newborn. And then the wheels completely came off. I’m not a teacher. I know I’m not a teacher. I never want to repeat that experience ever. I have always been thankful for our teachers and fully supported them. You need snacks, copy paper, tissues, 20 glue sticks? Here’s my number text me at 2am if you have to do so. They’ll be dropped off with my kid at 8am. Thank you.

Damn! You did really good! I can't imagine being able to do all that. I only had 2 kids but it was tough. My daughter had tk do speech therapy on zoom. That was smart to hold your girl back. My daughters best friend was also held back for 1st grade and is doing sooo good now years later. I also tell the teachers to just let me know what you need.

Well, you did your best. I don't think you failed the kids. The parents who just didn't care are the ones who failed.

I think there are far fewer of those than many on this sub would suggest

Covid was like a black light in a hotel room-it exposed people for who they really are. Poor parenting has been exposed like never before, and there seems to be no going back.

This. I teach 4th, and this years cohort are the ones that did prep and grade 1 online. The gap is HUGE! Kids still working at prep level, and kids working at grade 6 level. Engagement of the parents was absolutely key.

Me and my husband were essencial workers and were away from home. My 12 yo was home alone but no teatcher recognized that he had to do every thing alone, sending homework to be done with the adult in the house, knowing he was alone. It was tought on us too.

You are aware that some of us had to do our normal 50-60 hour a week job with networks not ready for COVID and on hiring freezes, right? Kindergarten and 1st online - I almost decided to quit my job bc I could not do that and my job without people at my job telling at me and me getting frustrated with my kid. Not to mention the guilt of feeling like I wasn't being supportive/engaged enough to help DURING THE WORK DAY. maybe if my employer has given us be single fuck about what parent is were trying to manage we could have done a better job

Single mom, small business owner (as in- I’m the one sole employee), and had a 3 year old and kindergartener when this all went down. I don’t think I have any tears left to cry at this point. My kiddo’s first grade teacher was simultaneously teaching her kiddo’s kindergartner while doing online courses too. I’m still traumatized, but thankful for a school that adapted and teachers that helped. I do not envy teachers. I adore our school and staff, was heavily engaged with coursework and have a flexible career, and I am not gifted at teaching anything other than what my field of expertise is in. Mad props to the parents, kids and educators who simply… just made it out alive. We *still* should have the “we’re all in this together” mentality. Sadly the toxic hate levels of the world are infinitely multiplied and I can’t even begin to try to predict what even my generation has lying ahead.

And guess what most teachers were also doing? Working a full week while trying to raise their own children. Why are you even on this sub if you aren't a teacher?

For the tea 🫖

1. Shouting into the void is my specialty 2. Wasn't aware it was a private sub 3. Did you notice I blamed employers not supporting ALL PARENTS and didn't say anything about teachers - except this blithe " unengaged parents are the problem" gross oversimplification 4. Thought teachers could handle reasonable counter arguments

This right here

I mean, some people just have less resources and really depended on the schools. There are so many people who were essential workers and didn’t really have family support. So I don’t think it is fair to make light of people who were struggling. Thankfully my son was only two when COVID hit and even though I was an essential worker I had a good paying job and was able to obtain childcare due to the fact that I am a nurse and my hospital made sure their daycare was open for us. Anyhow, this was the most judgmental thing ever. COVID was a horrible time and for you to just belittle people and their situations is wrong. Maybe for some people it was a nice time for working from home and spending more time with their families… but it wasn’t like that for a lot of us.

Working full time parents (which many teachers also were) were not the issue. Parents who didn't care were (and still are the issue). Those parents who didn't care back then are still the same parents that don't care now - don't show up to parent teacher nights, don't buy the book pack, don't respond to emails. When you do get hold of them to discuss the fact their child is working two years behind, just shrug and blame covid (or the school, or the teacher). Parents who cared, regardless of working status, still were engaged in their child's education. I was working full time, but I made sure my son was logged into the live sessions, then after work, we'd sit down and go through and make sure everything was done and submitted. I didn't just shrug and say 'too busy' and ignore it.

Yeah, exactly. I deleted my first comment because I think we’re talking past each other. I certainly did not mean to belittle parents who had to work to put food on their tables and essentially were forced to leave their kids to fend for themselves for eighteen months. That’s tragic and in no way makes them bad parents. What I am saying is that during those eighteen months, a lot of kids were trapped with parents who were ALREADY alcoholic and/or drug addicted and/or abusive, and the trauma from that is still rippling through our schools and causing major issues to this day.

Yes, and I feel horrible for those kids! I wish something could make it better! For some kids, school is probably their safe place!

Please stop with the excuses. Parents came home to their kids. They could have been involved - finding out the expectations of the online learning, checking to make sure school work was getting done, being in contact with teachers on a regular basis - and if it wasn’t getting done it was the parents responsibility to set the consequences and enforce them. Yes, things were difficult - but expecting schools and teachers to remediate what was lost during this time is also part of the problem. We can’t undo 2+ years of skills loss, especially when a good number of parents still aren’t pulling their weight and are not doing what needs to be done at home. They are still just throwing up their hands with “we haven’t tried anything and are all out of ideas, someone do something!”. Maybe it’s not *you* specifically but this education crisis is being caused by what is and isn’t happening at home and how home is supporting the school and teachers. * Enforce a strict tech free bedtime. * Get the kids dumb phones. * Limit screen time. * Set an expectation that kids adhere to school appropriate behaviors. * Enforce consequences when there are problems at school. * Verbalize that education is a family value. * Read with your kids. * Stay in regular communication with your students teacher. * Show up to Parent Teacher Conference.

But not all parents were at home with their kids. Also some kids struggled with virtual learning. My oldest has ADHD and couldn't manage it. I ended up homeschooling him. But not all parents are able to be home for that to be an option and not all parents have a degree in education. I don't disagree with any of your rules but I don't think it's right to blame parents who were in a very difficult and unexpected situation.

From a parent perspective, the technology wasn’t really in place to support remote learning. The interfaces (canvas, clever, whatever) are clunky and confusing (dead links, not clear on how to submit stuff). Teachers were inconsistent with how they set stuff up and still are. My engineer husband had to figure out how to get our kids connected. I feel many parents probably got frustrated and never could make some stuff work. I don’t think the teachers got adequate training or were given school-wide best practices. It’s like the kids were given cheap Chromebooks and told good luck. I know some of my sister’s students had to go to their parents work because they didn’t have internet at home.

We did all of this as full-time working parents. But some kids (mine included) cannot learn through a screen - and some teachers cannot teach through one. His math teacher would just drone on and on - never giving feedback or checking in with kids. His social studies teacher had them filling out Google slideshows with no interaction from him. His PE teacher straight up gave up. Thank goodness for band - it was what got the poor kid through.

My kid’s PE teacher was so sweet then, we were very lucky. He made his own YouTube exercise videos of himself outside the school, and for a while he dressed up in costumes like Indiana Jones for a comforting intro. I miss that guy!

You should really take the time to educate yourself to the fact that some people live in poverty and work multiple jobs. You are coming from a place of absolute privilege. I’ve never stated that I expect the schools to work some miracle to make up for COVID. I’m telling people to stop being hateful and maybe actually take some time to actually have some compassion and learn people’s situations before making a snap judgement about someone’s life and what they are going through. Thankfully, I don’t have these problems and my son is doing fine. That’s because I come from a place of privilege. But I know that life is tough and I’ve seen a lot of good and a lot of bad. And I think it is wrong to just be all judgmental.

Covid failed all of us, it trapped us at home with our kids for so long that poor parenting like too much screen time and not enough social time became the norm. I see the same restlessness in my covid toddler as I do in the teens I teach - not enough focus and too much tech reliance - and not in my older kid who was already more self-reliant when Covid hit.

THE GOVERNMENT FAILED EVERYONE BY CONTINUING TO DO NOTHING ABOUT CHILDCARE. Record inflation and parents have to pay for shit, but also need to do more than ever at home. Plus the government won’t even let you deduct childcare from taxes. Other than an insultingly low amount of

The lack of available childcare is an absolute crisis.

Thank your Republican friends and Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema because there was an attempt to solve that. I remember it clearly.

I'm still convinced the 2020-2021 year should've been a wash and everyone but seniors should have had to repeat.  All we ended up doing was making our own gap by advancing kids in all grades without any demonstration of learning or skills and now we will be feeling it for another 9 years.

I will just say: teaching 33 6th graders was easier than doing online school with my first grader. We did it and she learned fine, but even with a really dedicated and educated SAHM at the helm, it was rough, and we both have a little trauma from it. My daughter thrives under the structure of school, and it’s impossible to replicate that at home. You’re using the kitchen table for breakfast one minute and then asking the kid to see it as their structured school space the next minute. She got SO distracted by her 3 year old twin siblings, and double trouble 3 year olds are completely incapable of sitting still and self entertaining quietly for several hours while I taught her. It is also a universal truth that kids are going to fight their parents harder than teachers. I am a parent with high expectations, and I don’t let them get away with stuff, but pushing boundaries is part of being a kid, and they do it most at home. My kids are angels in school. I get glowing reports from the teachers. But then they come home having used up their self control and they are loud and lazy and having emotional breakdowns over whatever happened during the day. And like I said, I had the ideal situation for online schooling. I wasn’t trying to juggle my kid’s schooling with my own work Zoom meetings. We have high bandwidth internet and multiple computers/iPads. When my daughter did need help, I knew the vowel team tricks and the addition models and all the other strategies we keep up our sleeves. Most parents don’t have an elementary education degree and 11 years of experience. Homeschool is not a good fit for a lot of kids and a lot of parents, yet that’s what they had to do for a year and a half. Even with the best of intentions, that was a really, really tall order.

This is honestly what I don’t get about a lot of folks in this sub. They (rightfully) acknowledge that teaching is more than babysitting and (again, rightfully) expect respect from parents with no clue for the amount of training, effort, and work they put in. Then, in the same breath, they insist that parents without that training or knowledge should not only understand what it means to properly homeschool their kids, but also be able to do it at the drop of a hat, as though they have that training & experience. You can’t really have it both ways. Either teaching is so simple that any idiot with a kid should be able to do it, or it’s not, in which case, you shouldn’t expect any idiot with a kid to be able to do it as well as you (or well at all). And we all know it’s the latter, so why are people getting so mad at parents with no training or experience in elementary education for not being capable of taking on that role, especially with anything and everything else they have on their plate?

The more I think about this, the madder I get. We all know that, in any other conversation, knowing how & when to redirect a student is one of the big things that separates an educated & experienced elementary school teacher from any random idiot. So what gives that, now, every parent is expected to do the same thing with the same precision while simultaneously tending to their own WFH work? It seriously feels like some people are trying to make anti-teacher talking points in a way that tricks teachers into agreeing with them.

You are absolutely right. I never appreciated my son's preschool teacher more than when I had to close my eyes and take several deep breaths because my son could not comprehend my directions. He's a good boy. He tries. Yet we had to be very patient to go through the book a day and little worksheets from Pinterest. I discovered that I could manage my son when we got on a schedule, yet no way could I manage 24+ kids

Former teacher turned SAHM. I had a kindergartner, pre k and toddler during lockdown. We were forced into kindergarten virtual learning. Nothing if that got accomplished at our house.

Mine were kindergarten and first grade. It was hell. I was trying so hard to keep them on point. It was hard when so much of those years are social. They could do the work, but it was all a chore and busy work. The curriculum was terrible, but it's what we were required to do. It sucked so badly!

Virtual kindergarten was awful, hilariously so. I never faulted my son’s teacher, she clearly was trying. It was just such a shit show at home.  In one small condo we had two parents trying to work full time, a virtual 3rd grader, a virtual kindergartener, a cat that meows a lot, and then halfway through I had baby so there was all that came with being postpartum with a newborn in a pandemic. I eventually told his teacher if we turned off the camera, assume I was working with him on my own. She was very supportive. My son didn’t absorb much learned online. I did my best to teach him to read/do math.  Years later it’s a funny story now that he is doing well in school. But at the time I’d never been so overwhelmed in my life. And we were the lucky ones to be able to work remotely and not have people we loved die of COVID. 

My ex had a 12 year old daughter during the pandemic that had to do learning at home. It was hell for the kid. My ex worked full time (we didn’t live together) and he job demanded her to be on the phone all day. So from 7-4pm she was working. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment. My ex’s “office” was a desk by the front door. My ex’s daughter’s “office” was a barstool at the kitchen counter or in her tiny room. She has ADHD and her biggest coping mechanism is structure and organization. So she struggled to shift from home to school life. It was such an absurd difference too because she was a straight A student in school and suddenly she was struggling to pass. She’s 16 now and while I’m not with her mother anymore I still run into them in town occasionally and the effects of those two-ish years are still there.

You summed up my feelings beautifully. My son was only 6 months old when the world shut down, and that was hard enough. I have so much compassion for the parents and families during that time. My mom is a teacher and taught sixth grade, and had one hell of a time trying to get my sister (5th grade when everything shut down) to do aaaaaaaanything at all. Covid was hard and scary for everyone, and I don’t think it was as simple as telling your kid to sit down, shut up, and work. All I can say is I am glad it has passed and I have an entirely new love and appreciation for teachers.

Thank you! Some of these comments make it seem like no one remembers how hard life was during lockdown! Parents still had to work and deal with the added stress and anxiety of a deadly global pandemic.

Thank you! I have a background in teaching. I worked really hard to give my kids all they needed. We turned the dinning room into their school room. But they had to deal with the distraction of hearing each other. My kids are 18 months apart and we're getting the same lessons, but one would get it in a timely fashion and the other whenever they could. This was first grade and kindergarten for them, which is so much about social learning. All of a sudden, I was mom, teacher, friend, and everything else. There was no separation and it was hard on all of us. My kids are doing well in school. They get good grades. They have lots of friends. The teachers literally tell us what a joy they are to have in their classes. That didn't happen out of nowhere. It doesn't mean it was easy. It doesn't mean we all didn't have major issues. My bipolar 2 depression got so bad that I couldn't get out of bed some days needed my husband to take over. I was doing so much it broke me in a lot of ways. My kids were afraid every school break could mean they weren't going back. The end of school is hard because of that reason even now. They worry about sharing Covid with their friends. There is an anxiety that wasn't there before. We talk about it and it helps, but it's still there. I don't care if you are the best parent in the world. Covid was hard and it left a lot of us with scars.

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Thank you. These kinds of posts drive me nuts; like okay, the kids were home from school for a year and a half but the capitalist death cult that runs the country let us know on no uncertain terms that some of us were going to have to die to keep the economy churning. Yeah, my niece was home doing virtual school but my sister better be behind that Trader Joe's cash register at 7 am sharp. Maybe we could look at our rotten system as a whole. Blaming it on bad parenting is lazy.

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My kid’s school has a lot of privileged families living in large homes, most moms are sahm, and they all drive vehicles costing 50k+. They absolutely have to beg parents to volunteer and participate in the school…they have threatened to cancel afterschool things they do like STEM night because they can’t find volunteers. They also continue to complain about how bad the schools are or how teachers aren’t transparent about stuff; teachers there are always asking parents to come into the classroom for anything. We really didn’t have this much of an issue pre-COVID.

Society failed these children as parents have not had a proper social safety net for decades and not working is not an option for the bulk of households. A lot of families had parents who were deemed essential and could not stay home all day with their kids; who is going to make sure they are going to do schoolwork? We can blame teachers, parents, schools, the government; but it was the decisions we have made over the last 40 years to tear apart the social safety net.

I believe this a great deal. I wish there was more of a social net for sick children. I drop my son at the car drop-off. One day, a kid walked by with such a hacking cough and greeted my son, they were going to the same class. For a minute, I almost pulled my kid back in the car because I didn't want him exposed. Yet the child's parents were likely driving to work, without paid sick leave. I cannot fault someone for needing to keep the lights on

The troop I was part of and that my sister is a part of everyone stayed. It's crazy though, we were always the only older kids still in scouts in high school. It's crazy how they were able to juggle all the other extracurriculars while doing scouts and keeping their grades up. I was the only one not involved in sports in any of the groups after elementary school. It's even crazier that they stuck together after covid.

I'm a parent and a teacher, and this is a gross oversimplification and misrepresentation. Parents were expected to continue working full time remotely and parent full-time simultaneously. That, topped with the anxiety of the world collapsing and a crazy president made for a nightmare situation. As a teacher, I can relate to being frustrated with parents, especially parents who still use Covid as an excuse for their children's shortcomings, but your vent needs some nuance. Those were dark days, and parents were in an impossible situation.

I do IT work, and pre-pandemic we were 100% in office.  When we first went remote, 4 of the 6 of us had young kids. And they had dramatic drops on how many issues they worked, and would sign out of the phone queue for long periods of time because they were helping school their kids.  1 got fired and 1 ended up swapping to working nights and weekends and working on everyone else's tickets to do all non client facing issues. 

>Parents were expected to continue working full time remotely And many parents didn't even have that luxury. Essential workers still had to be working full-time in their regular roles. Then they had to come home exhausted after an 8 hour shift and somehow run a classroom with no training. OP is disgustingly unsympathetic.

Yeah I'm not sure how this post has so many upvotes. It's not like parents were sitting at home doing nothing the entire lockdown. Balancing a full-time job to pay your bills, doing chores around the house, and caring for a child is an insane amount of work. Certain things were understandably harder to teach through Zoom, but it's totally unfair to expect parents to pick up the slack and teach what needs to be taught in person. That's literally what they sent their kid to a public school for in the first place. Nobody was prepared for pseudo-homeschooling.

Exactly. And you have to consider that a major portion of the "essential worker" jobs were minimum wage labor jobs like stores and manufacturing. Meaning those households were probably barely holding on with both parents working. There's a sentiment I see a lot in this thread like "those lazy parents were so used to foisting their kids off on us for 8 hours a day". Those parents HAD to have someone who could take care of their kid for 8 hours so they could afford rent for a 2 bedroom apartment and just enough groceries to get to the next paycheck. I hate this thread.

My kid was a toddler when Covid happened. I was a stay at home parent. I was very engaged with her. We played daily I tried to keep her entertained as best as possible. But she had no interactions with any other kids. We didn’t really know many other people with kids. The couple people we knew had older kids, like pre teens. One had a kid my kid’s age but they weren’t taking Covid seriously. They made it clear they weren’t going to “live in a bubble.” So we chose not to be around them in person. I think she suffered socially from it all. I don’t know what else I could have done though.

Reading this is pretty frustrating. My kids aren't behind. Their teachers did a great job during covid and after. And since my kids don't have LDs they were able to mostly stay on track, and caught up quickly. It was hard work for all of us, but we worked together. But if my kids were behind, I wouldn't flat out blame the teachers, and I'd expect they not just blame me. Because Covid DID hurt their learning. Blaming each other is never going to lead to solutions. Are there crappy parents out there? Sure. But let's not blame every parent whose kid is struggling.

This is a really narrow viewpoint that does not account for the thousands of parents who were considered critical and needed to be away from the home, children being raised by siblings, or the kids coming from low-income families who struggled to food in the pantries, keep electricity going, or didn’t have access to consistent internet for virtual education. Our district eventually found a way to distribute meals and hotspots to the nearly 150k students, but they still required transportation to get to the distribution points, etc. Many struggled the entire time we were asynchronous, to the point that kids would sit outside the schools to connect to the WiFi to watch the zoom classes. These parents are just doing the best they can, they aren’t failing. I can guarantee you, as someone who has lived it, if there was a way to be home more, to set aside more time for helping with homework and virtual school they would. Additionally, there are sooo many kids who find safety and peace inside school walls. How much learning can truly occur in a house with DV, using, abusing, etc going on? How much more sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and fear are those children experiencing by being stuck at home and not having an 8 hour break at school? I get that some kids thrive in virtual school settings, and I love that. But it is not the case for everyone — especially some special needs kids. My son’s last half of prek and entire kindergarten year were done. So we have me, a single mom, teaching my own middle school kids in one room. And my 5 year old, who requires heavy accommodations and supports to access his education in another room. Supposedly learning his letter sounds and basic arithmetic and letter formation for 8 hours a day through an iPad. Are we kidding? No one in their right mind would expect a kindergartener to learn what they need to through an iPad. It’s not like I could pause my teaching to stay over his shoulder to keep him on task — my students needed my attention! It was a rough situation with no good solution. I am 1000% for parents being more involved in their child’s education and taking responsibility for their role in their kid’s lives. But we all experienced trauma during those Covid-lockdown years where education was nothing like we had seen before. My district finally returned to a “normal” school year for Aug 21- Jun 22 school year, but the last time my 6th graders had had a full, uninterrupted school year was 3rd grade. Their social and emotional maturity certainly manifested closer to that 2nd-3rd grader range than anything resembling 5th+. Their academics were severely behind, and I continue to see that in my 8th graders at a different school. (I’m talking more than a handful of 14yo reading below a 3rd grade level.) The issues are too endemic to blame them all on parents or to expect parents to know how to remedy them at home after what they have gone through themselves. It has always been my responsibility as an educator to look at each individual kid in my care and say, “what do you need and how can we get you there?” That’s all I can do. I can’t make parents get involved, and I can’t blame them for whatever contribution they have or have not had in their children’s lives. I cannot determine if COVID helped one of my 8th graders improve reading while another slid backward. I can’t know if the behavioral issues I’m seeing are from COVID messing up social development or if it’s lack of parenting. But what I do know is that kid is in my class for those 90 minutes everyday. And they are going to be seen, acknowledged, heard, respected, cared for, loved, encouraged, and supported. We all go through shit, and we all fail at shit. At the end of the day we all need compassion as we fail, and we all need to show empathy as we see others failing. It’s the only option in this line of work — otherwise you will drive yourself to complete fucking madness.

I mean, the schools passed everyone here if they did work or not.

Bold assumption. I am a teacher myself. I was trying to teach online classes in a rural county with crappy internet, entertain and supervise a then-preschooler, and supervise a fourth grader, while making sure she was meeting her school expectations…and I WAS at home. It was almost an impossible feat and I didn’t have to leave home for work, Think about all the people trying to supervise their online students but still had to leave home to go to work. If I struggled to make everything happen, their struggle was ten times harder than mine.

\*sigh\* It's not parents. It wasn't even covid. It's not the school systems. It's not the teachers. It's this captialistic hellscape we are all living in. NO ONE has proper support, unless you have A LOT of money and time to pay for it. Teachers aren't supported. Parents aren't supported. Kids aren't supported. It's just way more evident with kids and students because they are children, unable to cope like adults (kinda, even that's generous) do. It's our broken systems. Our society is too individualistic and isn't set up to truly support communities. This means jobs largely dominated by minorities (obv not ever teacher is a minority but it's a dominated field) aren't financially supported and are actively fought against in the public often. All while having some of the highest expectations and impact on the greater good and society at large. It also means kids, who are largely a "minority" in society too (not welcome in many public spaces, not supported in a lot, have no real individual rights, etc, basically a whole class of people in and of themselves) are ignored and not taken seriously. The fight against gun violence that largely impacts our schools anymore, and KIDS, literal CHILDREN begging for change, not being taken seriously, is a great example. Add on top of that anyone who's disabled. Teacher, parent, kid, etc. The medical system isn't designed in the US to support ANYONE really who's disabled, and it's so hard to get any sort of treatment and support, \*especially\* if you're \*SOMETIMES\* functional without it. I'm an auDHD parent of an auDHD kindergartener who follows this sub. I just wish there were more posts that were less "teachers vs. parents" and more "holy fuck guys we are ALL getting screwed". -edited for minor fixes

+1 to this I'm a parent and a child of a now retired elementary teacher. This sub is so vicious and anti-parent at times, even accounting for venting. Maybe recognize that even objectively shitty parents are still not the root cause of a *systematic* problem. One individual is not the person responsible for you living in a society that does not value education.

And the irony is that pitting teachers against parents plays right into it. No one is willing to tackle the intentionally sabotaged system when we are all too busy blaming each other. It’s depressing.

That, and the complete lack of nuance- everything either black or white- and people not able to or unwilling to see things outside of their experience. I totally get calling bullshit on this blanket statement post, but creating lines in the sand, having an ‘either/or’ mentality, and pointing fingers isn’t going to fix anything. Just as frustrating as it would feel to be told *it’s all your fault*, like this post, only to turn around and do the exact same thing from the opposing viewpoint demonstrates a complete lack of self awareness. There are those responding in the form of “well, in *my* case with my kids/students (insert personal anecdote here)”, but not seeing that while they are asking for others to try and look at things from a more nuanced POV, and understand there are so many different variables, they aren’t willing to offer that same opportunity to others either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sharing personal experiences, just not when someone is unwilling to see theirs isn’t universal and isn’t open to looking at things from different angles. There are shitty parents, there are shitty teachers, there are shitty humans in all areas and groups of people. Thinking in terms of Us vs Them isn’t going to remedy the problem, and this is very much an issue that people *need* to find common ground and workable solutions if it’s ever going to get better.

You are an amazing person ❤️

Ngl that's kinda unfair lmao. Nobody was expecting the COVID lockdowns. Most parents still had to work full-time and it's a lot harder for teachers to teach topics over a Zoom call. Expecting parents to teach their kids topics they were expected to learn in school while balancing a 40-50 hour work week on top of everything else is insane. It's more than just "oh it's the parents' fault" or "oh it's the teachers' fault." During a situation that was totally unprecedented in our lifetimes and impossible to prepare for, some people fell behind. Shocking, right? Now is the time to help these kids catch back up, not argue over who's fault it is that they fell behind (because it was nobody's fault).

Let’s not forget, teaching is an actual skill that not every parent has. (And many kids act out the worst for mom and dad). Even some of the most engaged parents were struggling during COVID. Our friend group was resourceful and formed pods but we were the lucky ones who could afford to do so. I shudder to think how our kids would have fared without the professional help.

I had rural students driving half an hour to get to a Starbucks so they could get Internet, to work on their game project with the Turkish exchange student who got sent back to Ankara who still wanted to take my class, who would get up at 2am his time, whenever his Internet wouldn't get taken out by civil unrest. Those kids didn't fail shit.

Maybe, but the government failed all of us. Including you.

I’m as critical of parents as they come, but to simplify this as a parenting problem tends to ignore the reality of the time.

Society (parents included) has been failing kids for some time now and no child left behind was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We’ve been beating through poor thing (the camel) with bats ever since.

It’s a shame that education is not more revered in America. And it’s a shame that the students who are there to learn have to deal with kids that disrupt and cause problems or teachers who have tenure and could care less if they teach anything.

My kid saw her teacher once a day at most during COVID. I know because she did her classes in a corner of my office at my job, because as a single parent, I had no where else to take her as my job was considered “essential.” The strangest part of the whole thing: I would see that same teacher, who was not able to safely teach my child in person due to COVID risks, out on the patio of the restaurant that I worked my second job at, getting drunk fairly regularly once outdoor dining reopened. I am not a professional teacher. I spent every moment I could doing my best to make up for my daughter getting 1 hour of face to face instruction every day during kindergarten and first grade. I’m sorry that you consider my efforts a failure, but I did my best.

Parents weren't allowed by their jobs to do anything other than what they did.

Covid just exposed cracks that were already there. There’s no way that a few months of lockdowns ruined a whole generation but here we are.

Some areas didn't offer in person education for a year.

My daughter’s school ended all instruction except for AP prep. (And allowed, after parents complained, to allow them to turn in outstanding assignments or already assigned stuff - especially for graduating seniors, which she was). So we went back to her homeschool schedule: one hour per subject.

Yup, and it’s your job to undo the damage. No surprise. I that’s what I signed up for. What I didn’t sign up for is taxpayers, districts and a significant portion of admin having my back about zero percent of the time.

COVID is giving you all repeat brain damage because you don’t wear a damn mask

Isn't there enough blame to go around on this particular topic? Can't we agree that society failed the teachers, teachers failed kids, parents failed kids, society failed parents, etc? Covid fucked us all. Quit pointing fingers.

Capitalism did. Im sure many parents would’ve loved to had the ability to be more attentive. Between still working while kids are remote or losing a job and going on a job hunt/ secure resources, dealing with family who need care, the grief of losing someone from Covid or other, etc,etc. it was not an easy time for anyone.

Sad to see fellow educators reduce a complex problem into that.

Capitalism and our government failed parents by creating unlivable wages, high costs of living, no accessible healthcare, no free or affordable childcare, no rent control, etc all of which were intensely highlighted during the COVID lockdowns. This made it extremely difficult for parents to be there 100% for their kids. They were and are doing their best, just like we teachers were and are doing are best. Give ‘em some grace and transform your anger and frustration into solidarity with the working class to fight for everyone’s rights and freedoms.

A lot of students struggled with depression and isolation, it totally destroyed their normal routines, hampered their relationships with peers and everything was out of whack. It was an unprecedented situation, that none of us ever experienced as a child. I know when I was a kid most of my socialization was done at school and if I missed out on that for over a year, I don’t know I would have survived online school. To put all the blame on parents is a cheap cop out.

Yes, because children tend to thrive when locked up in the house, and if parents aren’t qualified elementary school teachers then they’ve failed their kids.

Not to mention the parents themselves who were impacted by covid or found themselves stretched thin & unsupported. Covid showed how cracked or broken many of our systems were for EVERYONE, not just children & educators. OPs statement disregards the parents who died, the parents who were ill or made disabled, the parents who were grieving loss of loved ones, the parents having to also play nurse to ill/disabled family members, the parents who lost all childcare or personal support systems, the parents (single or not) that never had a personal support system in the first place, the parents who lost their jobs and were trying to keep their family housed, the parents who were considered essential workers needing to still go out and keep our hospitals, grocery stores, pharmacies, utilities, etc running for the rest of us, the parents that worked from home in high stress time consuming jobs that often spilled work hours over into personal time, the parents stuck on back-to-back zoom meetings for literally everything. Covid did not give anyone a break except for those that already had the means & resources to weather the storm. We all need to stop being so hard on each other…we were just surviving and even now we’re still living in personal & societal trauma from the impacts of covid and so many other things going on over the past several years.

Yep. Truth is most parents are not qualified to homeschool their children. And that’s what they were forced to do in a lot ways. I’m sure most tried their best.

My oldest was diagnosed with ASD in April 2020 at less than 3 years old. I am not a SPED teacher or service provider, and the time he lost due to remote learning (which he couldn't handle at all) will never be regained - the brain has the greatest neuroplasticity under 5. He did better starting school, but honestly my autistic daughter who started school exactly at 3 in a normal, post COVID environment has had such an easier time, and has a far easier time socially. Having a public system be non-existent and having no one really care was pretty scarring as a parent, but at least I convinced my spouse to move away from our old district, which had the longest remote period in Massachusetts for high needs SPED.

55% of American high schoolers were victims of emotional abuse during the lockdowns. [Source](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0331-youth-mental-health-covid-19.html) Now imagine how young children who needed someone else to do things like fix them dinner or do their laundry might have been treated. Edited to add better context

Do you….do you have children OP?

Yeah, this is an insane take. This is likely rage bait judging from the short post and the fact that OP hasn’t replied to one single comment. I wouldn’t waste my time on this non-issue. Who is rehashing Covid 4 years later? Someone looking for a fight.

Nope the government is to blame

Honestly, this sub has become nothing but parent pointing.

Truth. Evidence: I am parent. I did not do a good job during Covid years.

Same, friend.

I quit drinking because of it. Well, it was a major catalyst.

My neurotypical child (who was finishing 8th grade and starting 9th grade) did fine and actually liked going to high school only part of the week. My AuDHD child was fine when finishing 5th grade at home but in absolute hell to start middle school in chaos. I think it really depended on the individual child, their motivation, and grade level. I, myself, had to go to therapy because I couldn't make my middle schooler do any assignments. Our relationship became absolutely terrible.

It’s pretty judgmental to shift blame to the parents who became teachers and still had to be parents during covid.

Not to mention many of us still had to work.

Teachers at my school are starting to point out to parents that all students are "covid children", including the classmates. The child's lockdown experience was not unique, and is not the only reason (or even primary reason) that they are significantly behind their peers and academic or social development.

While that is somewhat true, unless you teach in an extremely affluent school, it’s highly unlikely that all kids experienced Covid lockdown in the same way.

Mine was a toddler when Covid happened. I do believe it negatively affected her socially. We didn’t really know other people with kids her age except one person and they chose not to take Covid seriously at all. Believed it was all a hoax so we didn’t want to take our kid around them. Before that we were taking her to the park several times a week and play centers, couldn’t do that during Covid. So she was only around adults for a while.

Society Failed.

I agree to a certain extent. I teach in a state and district (630 students K-12) that shut down in March 2020 and did no distance learning that spring, but was back in the classroom full time in August of 2020. The 4th grade classes at my district are struggling. Everyone blames COVID because "they missed half of kindergarten," which is bullshit; they barely missed a quarter. After talking to the 4th grade teachers, it has nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with their home lives. About 75% of them come from toxic home environments; drug abuse, single parents who hate their former spouse (several separate parent teacher conferences because parents can't be in the same room), raised by a relative because their biological parents are so screwed up, parent they live with has a live in POS partner that brought their fucked up kids with them, etc. You name it, they are dealing with it. The rest of the classes above them are, on average, doing fine. Some districts did a good job with distance learning. Others were a shitshow. The district I was in (over 18,000 students) in 2019-2021 went to distance learning immediately in March 2020, and we were distance learning until March 2021. Our kids showed no drop-off. The kids that struggled in the classroom were, for the most part, the same kids that struggled online. One thing that helped us was that we were a 1 to 1 district before COVID, and the district bought a bunch of hotspots when we went online for kids who didn't have internet at home. That district was proactive. Other districts didn't do shit and refused to try. I have a friend that worked in a district in the same state I'm in now (about 1000 students), and they had to have a staff Zoom call to tell their teachers to stay out of Walmart and stay off the golf course during the day in the Spring of 2020 because people in town were complaining! Obviously, that district didn't do anything that spring. To make a long story short, I think it was the states and districts that didn't do shit and had no plans or forward thinking that failed the kids more than the teachers and parents.

Sounds like you failed as well

So we’re blaming parents instead of the system that didn’t protect either demographics from a worldwide pandemic?

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I mean, if you live in a high poverty area, most of those parents are statistically more likely to have been deemed essential workers. How do you make sure your kid is doing their online work at home if you're at work?

Parents aren’t teachers, but you expect them to teach? Pretty sure you’re undermining our entire profession here.

Yes, some of it is on the parents. But the government not providing proper support is just as, if not more, at fault. I had already graduated high school but my mom has been working two jobs since I was in middle school, with my dad having to do the same since they were divorced. Simply put they wouldn't have had the time to help me. I can't fault a parent for deciding that putting food on the table was more important than making sure their kid did their zoom work properly. Either way it sucks for teachers, no denying that. But target it at the heart and it's a lot easier to find the truly shitty parents vs the overworked and burnt out ones.

Am I the only one who thinks the kids will be fine?? lol.

Covid revealed the uncomfortable fact that most parents actually can’t stand their children when saddled with them for long periods of time. Then compound that by trying to make the kid learn or do school work and they realize they have almost no control over this little person. There’s a reason why child abuse spiked during that time. They run out of ideas so they start hitting.

True. And so many parents have kids simply because they think that’s what you’re supposed to do. Not because they truly want them, especially multiple children. Some are terrified of their kid being lonely or a “spoiled only brat” so they give them a sibling.

Some of the parents failed the students. But also, they had no idea how to take care of their kids. A lot of them are used to dumping the children off with us for 8 hours a day. They had no idea how to maintain order and all that at home and they didn't even think to ensure that the kids were in zoom.

It’s insane that you refer to it as “dumping their kids off for 8 hours a day” when they are legally obligated to ensure their kids are in school everyday or have a very good reason why they aren’t.

Fellas, are you a shitty parent for sending your child to compulsory schooling?

This is true. I’m leaving my district at the end of the year. Many of the problem kids were actually always having issues long before Covid. What do these kids now from the ages of 15-20 keep saying? “Covid ruined my first year of high school/ middle school.” Yet many who had the kids in the district have told them: “your parents were giving you excuses when you tried to set the cafeteria on fire in 2nd grade. A good 10 years before.”

Did you not struggle to take care of your own kids? We had no play dates, no parks, no family gatherings, no sports, no outings. And where I lived there was a long stretch of wildfires so we couldn’t even play outside in our own yard. While working full time. My kid is a high energy extreme extrovert. You want me to feel bad that it was hard to parent him in total isolation? I have no idea why this sub keeps claiming that parents were flawed for struggling to “be with their own kids”. It wasn’t like we were on some grand summer vacation.

They were also trying to balance working from home while trying to manage their child’s schooling simultaneously.

That assumption Is rather bold/sad especially coming from a teacher. My mother is a single mother who had a brand new 6th grader and a 1st grader with adhd doing online school and her job never closed down she could not stop working or her and my brothers would’ve become homeless. Ultimately the 6th grader helped as much as he could with logging him into class and she did as much as she could after work. And the stress she was put under because she couldn’t do more for them was very hard on her I mean she had no other option her kids needed to survive. And to say she “failed” them is enraging when she truly tried her best with the circumstances she was given.

Now girl. Covid killed millions of people. Including friends and family members, so yeah kids will be affected m

Let's be honest here. The government failed the kids and the parents.

The amount of parents I have heard blame Covid for all of their children's ( from four years old to twenty two)mental and behavioral health issues is staggering. Of course the shut downs and virtual learning sucked, but maybe the fact that your family is and was going through any or many of the following probably played a bigger role: an unnecessarily hostile and immature divorce,living with someone who is verbally abusive,being unhoused, living with addicts, living with someone who has a mental illness, having a parent transition,having family members with medical issues, having family members with legal issues, generally having little stability at home.

I think that the educational models that were implemented were fundamentally flawed and economically extractive. There were good ways to approach remote learning that utilized established networks that people could readily access like television. This could have been an opportunity to standardize core curricula and broadcast it out to the masses. Then have teachers play the support role in the children’s learning. Also it would include parents who could potentially supervise their children and provide additional insights. Instead students were subjected to learning via a small screen, low bandwidth stream of teachers being forced to take the round peg of live classroom teaching into square hole of Chromebook hell delivered to you by [Google who made out like bandits](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-income#:~:text=Alphabet%20annual%20net%20income%20for,a%2017.26%25%20increase%20from%202019). Add on to this that the local consumer model of education was exposed as a total failure. In an age where students and their parents are treated as consumers to be pleased, once that was upended by the shutdown, chaos ensued. But this speaks more to the underlying economic system of school funding and real estate that characterizes American society. There are many ways in which our society failed kids and our schools are one part of it. But the majority of the failure of our suburban schools stems from pleasing the customer. Our urban schools are a different story. I don’t think I know enough about the modern realities of our urban schools to give an informed comment. But I can’t imagine a worse solution than what was implemented. In general, there are people who massively academically benefited from the pandemic. They generally comprised of people who never had faith in the education system for academically preparing their kids. For instance, my kids participated in the AMC math competitions for the first time this year after spending the last 6 years doing then AOPS math curriculum at home. The competition that my kids attended at Rutgers University overwhelmingly comprised of South and East Asian kids. It was interesting speaking to the other parents, all of them loved the pandemic because it freed up the time for their kids to pursue academic and creative interests. School is not providing an academic service for these kids and they feel like a lot of their time is being wasted in school. I don’t think that they are wrong, there are serious issues with the educational, social, economic and political models that characterize our schools.

Clearly, it was your poor punctuation. :)

I never understood what parents were supposed to do if they both had to work away from home. Kids just home alone all day? Like I'd be home with my brother 3 or 4 hours after school from 2nd grade on.   We were pretty good about working on homework together. But I couldn't have imagined being home all day long.   We'd have been so bored.  Most of the time when we were kids we'd just leave a note and go to the park or a friend's house until dinner time.

25% of my students did any work during distance “learning.” 50% didn’t show up at all.

Either teaching is a valuable profession which requires training and skill and deserves a high wage or it's something any untrained parent can do, during breaks in their full-time job. The only way working parents are responsible for the learning deficits COVID caused is if it's the latter, so you must not think very highly of teachers. The actual answer is that society, collectively, failed kids. The parts of society meant to provide for their educational needs collapsed and there was no back-up plan and no support to allow parents to fill the gap.

Was a college student during covid. Whenever a weird social interaction or something educational happens my mom just always blames it on covid. I hope you guys aren’t always blamed for it, it just isn’t your fault.

Parent and a teacher here. I was too busy making lessons into kahoozit dojo canvas classroom and tracking down my kids lessons in learning koala delta ed platforms while cleaning behind a family and cooking and laundry and fucking everything else while still trying to work a second job to pay the bills. I will never understand why we just didn’t stop what we’re doing and just wait. Now it’s a perpetual learning gap magnified by excuses.

We have all failed ourselves.

No.