Many colleagues are navigating their way through another period of home schooling as COVID-19 continues to affect our daily lives. However, unlike the lockdown in March 2020, many more colleagues who are also parents are now balancing the challenges of home schooling with working from home. This is a challenge for everyone as we don’t always have the same ability to interact with colleagues and supervisors. Here, we find out how some of our colleagues are managing and what they are doing to help them keep their sanity.
Steven Wilkinson
Specification Manager (Residential) – North Midlands
Me and my partner Beverley are both working from home at the moment and between us we have four and five-year-old girls, Isla (above left) and Olivia (above centre), in reception and a six-year-old boy, Zach (above right), in year two. On Wednesday, we had 21 lessons to do between them!
I have my set up in the kitchen where one can join me to do work, my partner has a desk and laptop next to her desk in the living room where another can work and we basically rotate when we need to.
Best way to describe this is very challenging, but we are lucky to have three very hard working kids who love to learn which helps!! What has helped is the understanding of managers that we should do what we need to at the moment to make things work.
Olivia Maycock
B2C Marketing Manager
I’m not going to lie, home schooling and working is tough. Some described home schooling kids whilst trying to work as being like that kids party game where you have to roll a six on a dice and then put on a hat and scarf and oven gloves and then try and eat chocolate with a knife and fork before someone else rolls a six and then you have to take it all off and start rolling the dice again. This pretty much sums it up.
The little things I’ve found that help are to encourage the children to be proactive; I put a sign on my door when I’m on a call reminding them that they can also try Facetiming other family members that have offered to help remotely and, on the first day, my youngest, who’s seven, took it upon herself to call her grandma for some help. I’ve never been prouder. But I also haven’t expected too much from either myself or them and have taken us away from the “classroom/office” for a little break when I’ve felt it’s all getting on top of us. Last week I found myself playing Blind Man’s Bluff for 20 minutes in the park in the pouring rain – good times…
Gary Buckingham
Specification Manager
It’s not that bad when you combine home working with home schooling, break times are fun too in today’s weather. My little five-year-old boy Adam (above) is becoming a whizz at spec writing. He also tells us we are not teachers and this is not school. We have had the benefit of drafting in grandparents, otherwise it would be carnage as we have a 20 month old girl too.
We are using all the usual; bribery, reward, punishment. He has recently begun to earn screen and Nintendo Switch time tickets after his school work is completed. If he pulls the golden ticket out of the hat he gets an activity of his choice – some banked for after lockdown.
Laura Rutter
Specification Manager
I have an 11-year-old daughter called Annabel (above, front, with Maggie the German Short-Haired Pointer) who started year seven this year and a 13-year-old daughter Poppy (above, rear) in year eight.
Home schooling has been a rollercoaster of emotions for us from the start, I have one daughter who is a real academic and is possibly the most competitive person I know, so for her it was great at the start, she knuckled down and got on with it without too much hesitation, whereas the younger child has been a nightmare from the start, we’ve tried every bribe there is, to begging, screaming, being nice and just ignoring her! None of those things seemed to work, until she went up to senior school, and then all of a sudden it’s been a role reversal, she’s loved the variety of lessons and impressing her new teachers, and gaining those all important achievement awards! The elder one now moans non-stop about how rubbish her life is and how she misses her friends and what’s the point of doing any of this anyway is banded about daily!
I think what has kept us going is to try not to put too much pressure on anyone or ourselves, it’s pretty rubbish for us all and us all getting wound up with how much is being done or not being done just isn’t helping, so if they have a day where I just can’t get them to sit and do the work, well it doesn’t matter, they can catch up the next day. My youngest daughter has her facetime on all day with a group of her class mates and they do the lessons together, and discuss what they need to do and if they get stuck they can help each other, which has been a great help for her and her motivation. The other things we are still trying to do are exercise every day and do the things that make us happy and feel as normal as possible. We are lucky to have horses which need caring for every day and when we are there it feels as normal as ever.
All this said, we are all still friends and we have spent more time with our close family than ever before and we will never get this chance again. I just feel sad that my children are missing out on so much of the social side of being 11 and 13. I don’t think we realise how important the social side of school is for children and that’s not something we can offer from home.
Nicola Pye
National Sales Manager – High Rise
I am home schooling my 10-year-old son who is in year five while working full time because my husband is a key worker. My key things are being organised. I make sure I print off my son’s work the night before and understand what he needs to complete and by when.
We have also scheduled a 30 to 40 minute lunch break where we go for a 20 minute walk, leaving all electronic devices at home, and make sure we eat lunch while not working.