Crisis schooling not the same as normal homeschooling

Ari Armstrong:

Hundreds of thousands of children who normally attend Colorado’s schools now are stuck at home because of COVID-19. Governor Jared Polis recently extended school closures through April, and various districts quickly announced they’d stay physically closed through the school year as they ramp up online learning.

“Everyone is homeschooling now,” perhaps you’ve heard. Sure, students are schooling at home. But this crisis schooling looks hardly anything like regular homeschooling. Indeed, most families who normally homeschool have radically changed their routines during this crisis. So parents should not judge normal homeschooling by the very unusual conditions this crisis has created.

Now that I’ve started “homeschooling” my son, the very term strikes me as misleading and even silly. Although my son is old enough for kindergarten in the Fall, we’ve decided to go the homeschool route. So I have joined various local homeschooling Facebook groups and started taking my son to homeschool co-ops. Prior to this emergency, only a fraction of what we did took place in the home.