Jack’s Last Day of 3rd Grade… and WHAT a Year it Was!

I was looking back at my post about Jack’s last day of 2^nd grade from last year, and I thought THAT year was the weirdest year of school. I was quite wrong, because this year was the continuation of our experience with pandemic school. Jack was fully online from September to May, and then returned in person 4x a week for about 5 weeks.

I set up a desk and laptop in Jack’s room, which is right across the hall from my home office. I also got him an iPhone (not hooked up to any networks), so that we could set alarms for when he had to check in for each class. Each day, he had live classes followed by classwork/homework. I listened with one ear to each class and supervised to make sure all his classwork was completed and submitted.

While it was exhausting to juggle full-time working from home and full-time supervising classes, we got into a good rhythm. Then, once my husband and I were fully vaccinated I did some belated ‘back to school’ shopping to top off Jack’s backpack with new pencils and folders and sent him off to in-person school.

The transition was hard for me – after being involved in every single day of his learning, suddenly I was in a blackout. Rather than knowing exactly what the teacher discussed in class, I would get the typical kid response of “I don’t know.” It was a nice break though. It finally felt like I could put some of the balls down that I’d been juggling since March 2020!

I was a little worried about potential behavior issues with Jack’s return to school. I mean, it had been many, many months since he’s been able to play in-person with his friends and frankly, we’ve both gotten a little weird(er). Jack’s transition to in-person was super smooth though and he finished the year strong! He had absolutely no problem with wearing a mask to school each day and his grades were stronger than I had even hoped for.  

He also accomplished his self-imposed goal of wearing a tie dye shirt to school every single day that he attended in person.

And now we’ve made it… and he is on to 4^th grade in the fall!