Corona diary of a mother
Alternating lessons – why the back and forth is an unreasonable imposition
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Anyone who brings up children needs structure. It doesn’t work without it. Unfortunately, however, the model of alternating lessons offers pure chaos – with consequences that push many families to their limits. A mother of four indicts.
Marie Stadler
Three hours after getting up, I consciously sit on the living room floor, breathing through my mouth and with tears in my eyes. I do this because otherwise I’ll scream and I don’t want to scream. I don’t want to sit on the floor panting and struggling, but I can’t think of any other strategy to calm myself down. The fact is: I am completely exhausted, my mom experience fails. The children sit sulking over their chores, the teen looks for someone to blame for everything and finds me, the baby has in the meantime outwitted the parental controls and broken ten plates into a thousand pieces. First I blamed myself for moments like this. Then I realized: What we’ve been doing here for months is actually not feasible. And yet the world seems to think we’re still lucky. “After all, your children are allowed to go to school!” Says a friend from Baden-Württemberg. I nod and think, “Then why does this happiness feel like sheer chaos?”
A week of anything days
Alternating lessons sounds so nicely organized. By system and structure. But at the latest when more than one child lives in a family, the order is over, because a different system applies for each child. With us, the youngest has lessons every two days, but only from 9 a.m. Fortunately, the middle child goes to school on the same days, but from 8 a.m. The oldest child has one week of school Thursday through Wednesday and then another week off, but sometimes it varies. The two primary school students have to test themselves on the first two days of attendance of the week in the morning, and an email with the result must be sent to the teachers by 7.30 a.m. The eldest has to test herself on all attendance days except Wednesdays, I have to document the result in a test diary, which has to be signed and brought along. Sounds completely gaga? It is! Especially when you consider that we’ve been doing this for ages and obviously will continue to do so for a long time to come.
“I hate school!”
Quite apart from the lack of structure, there is also a lack of everything else that makes school beautiful. The circus project? Canceled! School night? Canceled! Physical education? Oh no! Swim? Maybe at night in a dream … Sing together? For God’s sake! I could go on and on with this list. On the one hand, that’s nice because it shows how lively everyday school life is in normal times. On the other hand, it’s a tragedy because school has become a farce. A place where the bare essentials happen, the prime ministers might say. A place where the bare minimum does NOT happen, I would answer. Because, in my opinion, the most necessary thing would be to convey fun in learning and community. Instead, a first grader says to me, “I hate school!” “Well, how should I change that?”, The teacher asks me on the parents’ day, visibly exhausted. Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for you. I’m sorry for her. I feel sorry for the children. And I honestly myself too.
You’re welcome! That has to stop!
I am definitely not a corona denier. I am also not one of those who doubts the mask requirement or test requirement. I like to go along with all of this, I know how important it is. But the changeover model cannot be a permanent solution, while people sit next to each other in the ICE without tests, the catering industry reopens, many still sit ten in conference rooms, entire daycare groups play without distance and wild holiday plans to Mallorca are forged. Are there really no ideas what reliable teaching could look like every day? Not even now, in early summer, when all schools actually have huge outdoor areas to offer?
So nice, the theory
The ministers, who see the changeover model as a reasonable long-term alternative to school closure, have probably never tested the changeover model for a week. They never broke ten plates while a baby was crying, a first grader was crying over the hard math problem, and a teen was slamming the door in anger. You have never sat on a carpet and breathed in non-existent contractions to avoid screaming from exhaustion. You have never prepared lunch boxes at the same time, accompanied tests, wrote e-mails to teachers, checked masks in the school satchel and then brought two children to school at two different times with babies in tow, in order to then learn Spanish and chemistry with the third child.
Family shouldn’t be like that! Family can’t be like that! The change model was an emergency solution, a provisional solution. That was ok for a while. But it must not become a new everyday life, it really must not, because it drives families crazy, takes children away from school and at least one parent the opportunity to go to work.
This article originally appeared on Eltern.de.