For Tracey Barnett Kinniburgh and her family, going back to school this year seemed like a daunting task – so the family decided to choose the online learning option for their two school-aged children.
The family’s oldest son, David, is going into Grade 2. Their youngest, Carson, is starting Kindergarten this year through St. Albert Public's French Immersion program. Due to concerns about COVID-19, the duo will be learning from home.
Barnett Kinniburgh said the family kept second-guessing whether they made the right choice.
“It was a pretty tough decision. We kept going back and forth because of the social aspect,” Barnett Kinniburgh said.
In the end, the decision hinged on the safety of a vulnerable person in the family's care. Barnett Kinniburgh said the family cares for someone who has stage four cancer – and they didn't want to risk exposing them to COVID-19.
The family also had concerns about the large size of David and Carson's in-person classes, and didn't feel schools were given enough funding for the children to head back to classes safely.
The Barnett Kinniburgh family isn’t the only family opting to keep their kids home this year. St. Albert Public superintendent Krimsen Sumners told the Gazette roughly 12 per cent of students were enrolled in online learning, while Greater St. Albert Catholic saw around 15 per cent of students enroll in online learning.
Barnett Kinniburgh said David and Carson didn’t love learning online last year, but the family has opted to hire a tutor to come in twice a week and help support the boys’ learning with money the family is saving from forgoing kids' activities this year.
“It was not easy. They struggled quite a bit. Completing assignments and engagement was really difficult,” Barnett Kinniburgh said of the challenges with learning online.
The children will use Google Classroom and Google Meet to virtually tune into their classrooms at school. They will virtually attend their classes with time scheduled for independent work. For Barnett Kinniburgh, that means a lot of juggling schedules while keeping an eye on her two-year-old.
“It is a lot of work for me, because it's a lot of juggling and keeping the two-year-old happy, making sure that assignments are completed – that is a huge thing – and understanding what the assignments are in another language,” the mom said.
Barnett Kinniburgh is currently on her last year of parental leave, so she said this is the last year she would have been able to support her children in online learning.
The family set up a classroom inside their home for the children to learn. One of the big expenses of choosing online school was getting each child their own device to tune into class with.
The mom said she never thought she would be doing online school with her kids and can’t imagine being a teacher this year.
“I have great respect for teachers, because I just can't imagine doing this with 30 students in the classroom. I can't imagine trying to tell them to keep apart,” she said.
Tuesday was the first day of school for children doing online learning in the city.
Jennifer Henderson is the Local Journalism Initiative Reporter for Great West Newspapers, covering rural Alberta issues.
