Teach your children well — or simply throw up your hands and hope for the best.
It’s been nearly six weeks since Mayor Bill De Blasio closed New York City schools to help combat the coronavirus. For frazzled local parents, it feels more like a lifetime.
“It’s a lot to manage,” says Kasey Woods, a working mother of three in The Bronx. Like millions of city parents, she’s been struggling to educate her kids in makeshift classrooms in their apartment.
It’s looking increasingly likely that classes might not resume until September — despite reports that children are struggling with remote learning.
On the bright side? Everyone’s in this together. Here, five NYC families tell The Post how they’re coping with homeschooling — the good, the bad and the ugly.
‘I tossed the schedule after Week 1.’
With her 18-year-old son and 11- and 8-year-old daughters all at different stages in school, Kasey Woods is taking it day by day.
“I have my own career, mental health, and the mental health of my children to keep in check,” says the 38-year-old mom, who has bipolar disorder and ADD and splits custody with her ex in the Bronx.
Early on, she put together an ambitious schedule for her family, outlining their days from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It fizzled out fast.
“It only lasted a week — it was too stressful,” she says. Wake-up time never stuck, and juggling her own work and overseeing the kids throughout the day became an itinerary-defying dance. “You have good intentions, but it sets you up to fail.”
While many parents are finding solace in online communities, Woods, who runs a literary ghostwriting company and wellness-oriented public relations firm, couldn’t stop comparing herself to other moms.
“Everyone was doing such a great job — they had great DIY science projects — and I’m barely holding on,” says Woods, who’s had to dial back her time on mommy groups. “It felt like everyone else was doing a great job but me.”
And then there’s the math homework.
“They’re doing Common Core math, and I never learned that way,” says Woods, who’s considering hiring a tutor to fill in the gaps.
The “guilt” over juggling work with her kids’ schooling is starting to weigh on her.
“I’m just trying not to mess up my kids’ future,” says Woods.
“I get up at 4:30 a.m. for some me-time.”
Bernadette Kinkele’s three-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side has been transformed into a classroom and therapy center for her three young children.
Her daughters, 7-year-old Molly and 6-year-old Olivia, have commandeered the kitchen for their online learning, which is now being graded. Meanwhile, her 2-year-old son Daniel, who has special needs, receives a reduced proportion of his assigned Early Intervention therapies in the living room over Zoom.
“It’s hectic,” says Kinkele, 47, a stay-at-home mom who lives with the kids and their dad, Dondi, 53. His full-time job as an MTA bus dispatcher in Brooklyn makes him an essential worker during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former nanny Kinkele adds that she felt overwhelmed at first, but is settling into a routine despite the “chaos.”
She gets up at 4:30 a.m. “to get some peace of mind” before the kids wake up at 7:30. By 9 a.m., Molly and Olivia are online with their teachers. The students at PS 126, the Jacob August Riis School, learn subjects such as math, English language and science via Google Classroom. Meanwhile, Daniel has behavioral therapy sessions for four hours every week, plus an hour each of speech and occupational therapy.
“It’s difficult not doing the therapy face-to-face because he’s so young,” says Kinkele. “The only real progress I have seen is with his speech.”
For now, she’s holding it together — but she’s terrified of catching the coronavirus, and being too sick to run the household.
“I am the lifeline to this family,” she says.
“We’re up to our ears in art supplies.”
Three-year-old Logan Scherr loved nothing better than attending the Preschool of the Arts in Greenwich Village. So when classes came to a halt, his parents acted fast to stock their house with distractions.
“Luckily, the school sent out a list of arts supplies to buy from Amazon such as beads, Popsicle sticks, watercolor paints and masking tape,” says Nina Scherr, a 38-year-old publicist who gave birth to her second baby, Jake, just last week.
So far, it’s keeping Logan amused. On weekdays, he spends about two hours every morning over Zoom, doing craft projects and other learning with his nine classmates and teachers.
“One of the biggest hits was him and Brian making a kind of space helmet from a kitchen colander with pipe cleaners twisted through the holes,” says Scherr, whose husband is a graphic designer. “All the kids wanted to copy the technique.”
The kitchen and dining area of the family’s Noho apartment has been converted into Logan’s personal workshop. There are stickers and paint splatters everywhere, but “it’s worth it because we need to keep Logan engaged,” Scherr says. “We want to keep him active and happy during this period of time when it’s difficult for him to understand what’s going on.”
“My special needs kids need more structure to stay on track.”
With both of her kids on the autism spectrum, Midtown Manhattan’s Lainie Gutterman says that lockdown has turned her into “something of a wreck.”
Homeschooling has been tough on the 45-year-old mom blogger, whose 10-year-old, Ian, and 6-year-old, Greenlee, typically attend Tiegerman Elementary in Glen Cove, Long Island.
“It’s extra difficult with special-needs kids,” says Gutterman, whose husband, Scott, is a lawyer. “Mine definitely need more structure than neuro-typical students.”
That’s especially true for Greenlee, who is non-verbal. The first-grader’s short attention span allows her to do only 10 to 20 minutes of speech therapy every day via a screen — and no other learning.
There are silver linings though: “Greenlee’s eye contact has improved because she’s been [with] her family,” says Gutterman. Plus, fifth-grader Ian loves technology — and being able to use his mom’s iPhone for virtual classes.
“He has a very deep-rooted routine and follows it to the letter,” Gutterman says.
She’s trying to remember to be gentle on herself and her family.
“There was a meme going around saying that the most important thing for kids at this time isn’t so much schooling as mental health,” says Gutterman. “I’m sticking to that principle.”
“We miss our pre-coronavirus family time.”
Back in the pre-coronavirus days, Vivian Chiu “always wished I had more family time,” she says. “It was rushed dinners, and you’d count how much time you have with your children.”
Not so much these days. The Park Slope mom of two was just furloughed from her job at an entertainment company, and the family time she’d dreamt of feels like “a hamster wheel.”
“There are so many tasks and logistics,” says Chiu, whose husband, Hal, is a lawyer. “I get out of bed [early] because I’m so anxious, figuring out what to do with the children … The fear is, how can I be productive?”
On weekdays, 6-year-old Esme and 2-year-old Julien have projects to work on from their teachers. And Chiu has her pet project: trying to keep the “sibling rivalry” under control.
“They’re both territorial,” says Chiu, who says the kids mostly duke it out for mom’s attention. “My daughter said, ‘I don’t like my life — Julien is always here.’ ”
Sometimes, that means switching the kids over to an arts-and-crafts project — or just surrendering to screen time.
“We’re four people stuck in a two-bedroom apartment,” she says. “Home schooling is not a priority now.”