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Helen’s Place LLC Update: August 9, 2022
Over a year later, the young mother interviewed in this story remained optimistic that they’ll have another successful year of public school in 2022-2023.
All four of the children are doing well. The year of Covid School during the 2020-2021 school year, will always be remembered as a treasured experience, and one they’ll never forget, but hope to never repeat again. One year in lockdown was enough.
Helen’s Place LLC – April 26, 2021
As the year of Covid-19 school comes to a close, a young mother with four children and a nephew, shared her story and provides advice. When it comes to raising strong, emotionally fit and well-educated children, look no further that Jaynie Hesselgren from Fayetteville, AR.
Faced with the early days of the lockdown in the Spring of 2020, Jaynie like many mothers, was uncertain of what to do. But as the Covid-19 pandemic progressed, and the move to online education occurred in the public schools her children were attending, Jaynie knew what she had to do for the 2020/2021 academic year – teach her own children herself.
The reason was because her children are athletes – award-winning runners in the youth track and field sport, with their tough, Swedish dad as track coach, and exclusive online learning just wouldn’t work for this highly active family.
Additionally, Jaynie knew her dyslexic nephew, already repeating fourth grade, wouldn’t thrive in an online learning environment either, so she had to make room for him in her homeschool too.
Now looking back on the year, Jaynie says, “I always had an intuitive feeling that homeschooling would be in my future. For me, Covid was just the confirmation that the time had come.”
ASSESSMENT
Once the decision was made to start her “Covid School” in the fall of 2020, Jaynie’s first step was to prepare for the school year by assessing what they had going for them as a family.
One of their main advantages, she thought, was a separate space outside of their home – an old church that they had purchased and fixed up.
Their second advantage was a semi-adult teenage daughter willing to help out when needed. As Jaynie put it, her teenage daughter was much less of a pushover, and they had “a little bit of a good cop, bad cop,” going on that worked perfectly to keep the kids under control.
MAIN GOALS
Next, Jaynie turned to the task of establishing her main goals for the year. Her priority list included:
1) cultivating a love of reading; 2) improving pen-to-paper writing skills (mainly spelling and penmanship); 3) filling in gaps in math skills and solidifying grade-level concepts, and 4 ) opening the children’s eyes to the wonders of science.
BEST PRACTICES
After assessment and goals, Jaynie turned to researching and designing a best practices list to achieve a successful year. Her best practices list included:
1) Establishing a morning routine to have her children greet each other and their arriving cousin before starting the day; 2) Establishing set hours for certain tasks to maintain accountability, and 3) Remaining vigilant to stay focused on the tasks for the day.
HOW A TYPICAL DAY UNFOLDED
Every morning, Jaynie’s twin daughters in seventh grade, and her daughter in the first grade, would read library books until their cousin arrived – consistently 20 minutes late.
All the girls were willing to help their cousin learn, and waiting for him reenforced the important values of tolerance and kindness. Besides their cousin wasn’t responsible for his parents’ lateness driving him there.
Once all the children were present, the day began, and they sat together at a big table to start with science. The textbook used was a McGraw Hill standard textbook found in a regular 7th grade science class.
Jaynie said she would “have the kids read the book out loud, one page at a time, pausing for conversation and more in-depth explanation in between pages.”
Sometimes she’d pull up short video clips on her computer to further illustrate concepts. She always insisted that the children take hand written notes while discussing them.
The notetaking “took time and patience,” Jaynie explained, but served a myriad of purposes including improving reading and writing skills and retention.
After about an hour of science, the kids moved on to using their laptops to login to the Khan Academy for a full hour of online math.
Jaynie said that she like the Khan Academy because it, “created adaptive learning plans for each student based on their individual tests.” Also, she liked that the kids could learn at their own pace, and were not allowed to advance in the course until, “they had mastered preceding concepts.”
Following science and math, it was time for a lunch break. The kids ate their lunch and played outside for an hour. Jaynie said she used this hour break to plan for the afternoon.
During the afternoon session, they switched gears to the language arts. At the beginning of the year, they had handwriting time, but as time progressed they moved past that into spelling and vocabulary.
They discussed 7th grade vocabulary words every day, and then the kids would write out the definitions and complete worksheets together in pairs using the new words.
Finally, the last hour of the day varied “between playing educational games, watching history documentaries (checked out from the public library), group reading, individual reading, and occasionally art projects,” Jaynie said.
RESOURCES
Despite the complex task of choosing learning materials for the school year, Jaynie was happy she was allowed by the State of Arkansas to choose everything herself and she felt capable of doing so.
This freedom made her “a little nervous for other homeschooled children,” because it’s a daunting task.
When asked to provide her favorite learning resources, Jaynie provided the following list:
1) The public library; 2) Cursive writing books with practice pages and numbered order of operation dots; 3) Kumon workbooks for math and reading; 4) McGraw Hill Science textbooks bought on Amazon for pennies on the dollar, and; 5) Khan Academy free online math classes. (Note the Khan Academy’s other free courses, and philosophy to help save American Education through online learning.)
IN SUMMARY
Overall It was a great year and experience, according to Jaynie, and next year would be great too with the children returning to public schools.
Her nephew made the greatest progress of all the kids – and the dot-to-dot workbook lettering really helped his writing, which should give him a leg-up next year.
One of her twins was accepted to the renowned Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, AR, and her youngest benefited from keeping up with the older kids and as Jaynie put it — became her child going into the 2nd grade as a fifth-grader!
The question of whether or not Jaynie Hesselgren would be interested in operating a homeschool or working in school administration again is uncertain.
What she’s proven to herself and her community, though, is that that she has the skills to do it, and knows that it takes love, determination, and a strong sense of responsibility to do it right.
Related audio/video recording:
Presents multiple options for homeschooling materials:
YouTube, By Jessica, June 1, 2019 “100+ Educational YouTube Channels for Homeschooling”
Other related articles you may be interested in:
The New York Times, Sal Khan, August 13, 2020, “I Started Khan Academy. We Can Still Avoid an Education Catastrophe”
A different viewpoint of the Covid-19 school experience from an educator in public school:
Helen’s Place LLC, August 19, 2021, “What to do when Kids Wear Masks Upside Down”
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