Photo by Mike from Pexels — Photo by **Mike** from **Pexels**

A little over a year ago, I started this blog. Looking back, I’m surprised that I hadn’t already written a Labor Day post. So here, I am writing one regarding this interesting year of helping our son with school and looking how our work has changed. I hope that you can see yourself in some of these stories.

When The Lights Went Out

Mine and my son’s paths are pretty parallel. When I started working 100% from home back in March, my son’s school closed two days later. Around the same time, my wife started working from home, too.

I am blessed that my employer already has robust systems, so it didn’t seem hard to switch from us working one day per week to the entire week. There wasn’t anything to build out, but more about confirming that the systems could handle more people working from home at one time. In terms of my son’s education, it was challenging for all involved. As I understand, on my son’s first day out of school, the teachers had a meeting to build out what learning from home then would look like. From there, in my opinion and experience, the teachers did a truly admirable job doing their best to help finish out the school year.

Between mine and my wife’s respective work schedules and not to mention supervising our son’s education, there was a lot of planning and scheduling. For one, we have an “office” in our our house. I would ask my wife the day before if I could use it, based on what she had scheduled. When my son had a video call, we coordinated who would supervise. If he had an assignment, we work to complete it. So yes, there was a lot to figure out.

Back To School

I look at our son starting school this school year. While we still have some things to figure out. Consequently, there are some things to coordinate with my work and how I can help with our son, while still doing my work. I could be frustrated by the less than ideal circumstances. However, I remember that things could be a LOT worse.

I have read multiple social media posts, where countless parents expressed concerns over balancing their children’s education balanced with their work demands. Some like me are fortunate enough to work from home. However, others have to “go in.” While expressed in infinite iterations, especially by those that can’t work from home, many parents cry out, “How am I going to do this?”

What I would say is to remember that you’re not alone. For our neighborhood community, social media has been indispensable. There are a few Facebook groups for parents that have sprouted up, including one just for my son’s first grade class. I have written much about the neighbors that we are blessed to know. We have a running social media message, where we check in with each other, share important information (especially about the upcoming school year) and all around help each other out. If there aren’t groups like this yet for you, then you could always start one. I have started a few and they aren’t hard to set up. You might be surprised at how many others are in the same boat.

A New Beginning

As we look at how our kids started their school year and how work has changed for many of us, we could consider this a new beginning, albeit a challenging one. Many parties are still figuring out how work will proceed in this post-pandemic world. I can only imagine the challenges in implementing virtual schooling on a widespread level, especially for school districts that have had to ramp up or essentially start from scratch. We can do little to change our circumstances, but let me remind you that we can change how we react. We could complain, which probably won’t change much or we can work to find ways of making things work. This next year may not be the easiest, but it is one that we can get past. I believe that we can and we will. I hope that you feel the same, too.

I CELEBRATE YOU. I THANK YOU. I SUPPORT YOU.

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