By Emily Williams
The COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine have provided Homewood Middle School sixth grade language arts and social studies teacher Leslie Tanner with a learning opportunity as her work and home life truly have collided for the first time.
She has been a member of the Homewood Middle School faculty for the past 16 years, taking only brief breaks while she and her husband, Matt, welcomed their three children – an 8-year-old son and two daughters, ages six and two.
“After the birth of each of our kids, I did not spend extended time at home but returned to teaching,” Tanner said. “Social distancing and our extended time at home has given me the chance to spend every day with our kids, especially our 2-year-old. She is growing so quickly, so this time I am able to spend with her has been irreplaceable.”
Overall, Tanner’s children have transitioned into the new normal pretty well. The couple’s parental philosophy has been to take it one day at a time.
“There may be days that work is busier for my husband or for my students and me, and the other parent has to help out more that day,” Tanner said. “Some days the kids wake up and become involved in a game or lost in an imaginary land of blanket forts and pillows, in which we let their creativity run the day and their school work is not completed until later in the afternoon. Some days the weather is beautiful and our back patio becomes our office and classroom. Through all of this, our mindset has become flexibility and patience.”
There are days that are more challenging than others, but overall Tanner and her husband have been able to keep a few household rules in place to maintain a sense of consistency and stability.
Family dinners are spent at the table and chores are expected to be finished around the house.
To give her oldest two kids an added sense of responsibility, Tanner has put them in charge of their younger sister’s continuing education.
“We created a daily lesson plan for her, and I have modeled lessons and activities where they work with her on learning her letters, numbers, shapes and colors,” she said.
A few of the family rules have had to be relaxed. The Tanner kids typically aren’t allowed technological devices until the late afternoon, and then only if they have earned it by showcasing a good attitude throughout the day.
“With school going digital, that rule has had to be modified to include the exception of school work,” Tanner said.
Spring is typically an especially busy time of year for the Tanner family, so the lack of time with friends and moving between extracurricular activities initially left a void.
Before the Tanners worked from home, the kids’ grandparents usually watched them in the afternoon while Tanner and her husband worked until 5 p.m. each day. Afternoons and evenings were filled by carting kids to sports practices and dance classes.
The parents typically would juggle taking their son to baseball practice three times a week or taking their oldest daughter to dance class once a week as she prepared for the studio’s annual recital. This also was supposed to be the first year their oldest daughter would participate in T-ball. Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings were spent in church.
“It was certainly unusual to go through our family calendar for the months of March and April and scratch out T-ball and baseball games and practices and replace them with Google Meets and online classes and activities,” she said.
Luckily, there are also a plethora of activities being offered by organizations here in Birmingham and throughout the country that have helped fill in time after school work is finished.
Tanner said her kids love watching the Cincinnati Zoo’s daily animal encounters, presented via live video stream every day at 2 p.m.
“Our son continues his baseball practices twice a week with a group of dads that coordinate online practices,” she said. A current player or coach will speak to the boys at the beginning of practice and then the dads will lead their kids through each skill and drills for the rest of the session.
“My daughter’s dance studio continues to offer online classes she can participate in in our den – and sometimes even includes her toddler sister,” she said.
Balancing Act
Before the quarantine, Tanner felt her greatest challenge as a working mother was missing out.
Though she loves connecting with students and watching them grow, she also missed similar moments of growth in her own children.
Tanner didn’t usually take her work home before the pandemic. She would stay at school until about 5 p.m., and when she arrived home her family would have her full attention.
Nowadays, two parts of Tanner’s world have collided, as her classroom moves into her home via virtual education.
“It has been a struggle to accept that my attention has to be split during the day and that my kids are having to see me on a computer more than I like,” she said.
The challenge also has been a treat, she said. A kind of collaboration has indirectly formed between Tanner’s students and her kids.
“As I record instructional videos and create lessons and activities for my students at home, I have tried to allow my own kids to be involved when I can,” she said.
“During the first few weeks of our quarantine, there were days I would ask my students to give one task my children needed to complete that day,” she said.
Her kids would excitedly rush to complete whatever task they were given and would take a picture or short video to share with the students.
“My kids still beg for days when, ‘Mommy’s school kids get to tell us what to do,’” she said. “My son also came up with the idea that he could read more chapter books by the end of school than my students. So, we have started a reading challenge to see who can read more books by May.”
Tanner has also had the opportunity to be a bit more active in her own children’s education.
“Sitting beside them to complete their lessons has allowed me to see where they are as a learner and their talents and struggles,” she said. “As a teacher myself, I often don’t use my own skills to help my kids the way I should because they have such amazing teachers at school.”
While the pandemic looms heavily, the Tanners have found silver linings in that cloud.
In the beginning, the kids would get bored, but that boredom has been replaced by new experiences despite the seemingly limited scope of opportunity when trapped at home.
There is more time to explore the backyard and the neighborhood and more time for lengthy or tedious activities such as finishing a puzzle or building and taking down a fort.
“Despite many attempts for years to learn how to ride a bike, we have been able to commit to practicing more and now have one bike rider in the family and are close to a second,” Tanner said.
This also has been a time of growth for her as an educator because she has used the additional time and new experiences to create more ways to reach students.
“I work with some amazing, talented people and the ideas and resources that have been created and shared and executed in the past few weeks have been remarkable,” she said. “I am excited for the new possibilities that exist once the school doors open again.”
