Home School Slackers

I watch as my son stands staring into the grid of faces checkering the screen of the iPad. The device is propped up on the kitchen counter against a rice cooker, so that its camera sits at his eye level. In the upper-left corner, the miniaturized form of his kindergarten teacher is singing brightly.

My son is supposed to be singing along, but he isn’t. He is supposed to be mirroring his teacher’s exaggerated gestures, but his hands hang at his sides. He looks at me questioningly. I am hovering beyond the frame, holding his little brother and wondering if I could duck out for a moment, smuggle the noisy coffee grinder into the living room to fix another pot. After all, we still have 20 minutes left on this, his first video conference since the COVID crisis brought an end to in-person learning in B.C.

“I want to do the librarian one again,” he whispers. He has been watching the Vancouver Public Library’s live story time each morning. The librarian can’t see when he doesn’t participate.

“No,” I mouth with exasperation. In the other video windows, three of his classmates are tuning in with varying degrees of composure. One boy bounces on a couch while his mother circulates in the background juggling two younger siblings. Another girl, under watch of her grandmother, sings along sporadically. By the end of the session she is making duck faces and giggling. My son’s teacher soldiers on. She has five of these sessions a week, each with an audience of four restless novices.

Before the call is over, the teacher summons the adults to the screen asking if we are following along with the materials she’s painstakingly posted to the new class site. I nod keenly, though in truth, I’ve only performed a cursory click-through while fighting a sense of foreboding.

We give thumbs-up goodbyes and hang up. I relinquish the plate of snacks I’d been using to ensure compliance, before admonishing my son for not participating more on the call. He says he couldn’t hear the teacher, he didn’t know what to do. OK, I sigh, we’re all still learning how this works. But in truth, I think, this is not so different from "regular" kindergarten.

Somewhere between Halloween and winter holidays we had our first parent-teacher conference. The notice instructed parents to bring their children along and I was relieved, recognizing a buffer. I wore a blouse. My son, then still only four, busied himself playing trucks on the floor for most of the meeting.

“He won’t run,” the kindergarten teacher said. We were standing less than six feet apart in a room of tiny chairs. The walls were taped over with laminated signs and alphabets, a chart of birthdays, a cloud of collages. We both looked towards the boy with knitted brows as though mulling over a stalled car.

His teacher went on to describe how he refused to participate in their daily sprints around the gravel field — rain or shine. All the kids did it, but not my son. In the classroom, he didn’t want to sing facing a partner. At small things, a stuck zipper on his coat, the wrong bend of the line while trying to write a letter in his name, he became incensed, defeated, a face of tears wailing inconsolably.

I had been making little affirmative noises of concern, trying extra hard to convey that I was engaged, capable. Then I switched tactics and tried on a look of surprise. But I knew exactly what she was talking about. These feelings, big, juicy versions of my own daily frustrations, the smouldering fear of incompetence, they overwhelm him. He is a little boy.

We agree he needs to work on his emotional maturity. He has to learn how not to be upset by such little things. I nod. I press my mouth into a sympathetic line. But I am the owner of a coat with a broken zipper, I want to tell her, and on a rainy days when it jams, unzips from the bottom, gets stuck in the teeth and unmovable, my fury is real.

In those fraught months of pregnancy, you might imagine your future child as a version of yourself. Only this new thing will be resilient and gregarious, adaptable to late nights and changes in routine. This fictional upgrade is so often an "old soul," its evolution from the squirmy animal inside you conveniently accelerated through a movie montage. Your toddler will have empathy. They will never bite an offensive playmate, even if no one is looking.

I found my child did not take after some fantasy stranger but was much more like me — to my joy, and resignation.

When I ask my son why he doesn’t want to run with the other kids, he tells me he is always last. He doesn’t like singing, not with other people. I tell him it’s OK to come in last. Someone has to be last, I say lightly. But I am lying. I only run for buses. I remind him that his father is a great singer. Maybe he’ll grow into it.

When they announced schools would close we were frantic, but I also wondered if it might be nice for my son to have a break. Then the new reality set in.

I am home, but still working. I barricade myself in the bedroom with my laptop, listening passively in a meeting, while beyond the door the kids stare into one screen or another. My audio is muted, my video off. I am a name. I consider opening a browser and filling a virtual cart with comfy T-shirts, or some clearance-priced party clothes I have nowhere to wear. How many other people window-shop like this with little intention of purchase, I muse. Are there billions of carts left abandoned in the aisles of the internet?

In the meeting I click on the yes button to show a check beside my name. I participate in a poll to pass a motion. An hour passes. I wonder what the kids are watching.

“This time, use your big voice so your teacher can hear, right?” I instruct my son. He nods noncommittally. It’s the morning of his third kindergarten call. We didn’t finish the week’s activities. I didn’t print the worksheets. The printer never has any ink. “Tell them about all the nature walks you’ve been doing... and the Lego?” I offer. As I hit the join button, I feel the guilt of my own truancy.

But this time, as his teacher welcomes him to the grid, the boy’s grin is wide and unguarded. He is transformed. He listens with interest as a classmate talks about visiting a drive-thru farm on a COVID-safe "Safarmi." He tells them about the big rocks we saw walking around a mountain park. By mid-call he has learned how to turn on and off his audio while others are talking; he has danced around with all the actions in the teacher’s song. I listen from the next room while he signs off and closes the iPad. My son is energized.

I think about how the call with his teacher is one of his few connections beyond the cramped bubble of this family. Next week, he will need paper, he tells me. They will be playing bingo. Sure, I say, rubbing his shoulders.

I am back in the corner of my bedroom for a work meeting. As people begin to appear in squares I try to imagine their homes beyond the clues revealed on screen, their partner’s murmurs off camera. If this is the new normal, I need to recognize the value in these interactions, I think. I need to do better.

The meeting begins and I listen in. I mute. I hope for a cat to walk through someone’s frame. No one seems to have a cat. I need a nap. I turn off my video and a photo of me appears in my window like a dummy passenger for the carpool lane. I stroll to the kitchen and brew another pot of coffee. Back in my corner with a hot mug, I turn my video on and my cloak of invisibility drops. I take a big gulp. I could always try jogging, I think. We are all still learning how this works.