Bollinger County students adjust to school while at home

Routine hasn’t changed that much at the Harper and Barks households. Not really. Every weekday morning, the kids get up, eat breakfast and go to school. The biggest difference is they usually don’t go any farther than the kitchen or living room to start their day.

Bollinger County schools have been closed since mid-March in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and will remain closed until at least April 24. Meanwhile, learning hasn’t stopped.

A typical school day at the Harper house starts at about 8:30 a.m. Laura Harper oversees schoolwork for her four daughters, who all attend Woodland School District. A paraprofessional at Woodland Grade School, Harper has plenty of time to spend with them since the schools are closed. Her husband, B.J., is a welder.

Their oldest daughter, Denyce, a sophomore, works independently and concentrates most of her efforts on Spanish.

Harper said she spends most of her time with the three younger girls: Karin, fifth grade; PaigeLee, fourth grade; and Isabel, second grade.

“We typically start the morning out with a devotional reading and then follow that with 30 minutes of independent reading. Then we start handwriting. The first thing I have them do is practice cursive writing. Then I have them read it back to me for comprehension,” Harper said. After that, they work on what she described as stations.

The first station is Harper’s laptop, and the second is Denyce’s Chromebook. The third station is Harper herself. The three grade schoolers rotate from one station to another. They have access to their sister’s Chromebook all morning because she does her schoolwork in the afternoons.

“On my laptop, they work on Prodigy, a math game — a wizardy thing. The kids love it,” Harper said. “On Denyce’s Chromebook, they do their reading. The two middle girls, they’re working on Reading Plus, a program where they read and answer questions. The youngest, she does the reading part of Education.com.”

Perhaps the best station is Harper herself.

“Whoever is not on a computer, I work with that one,” she said. “We review concepts they struggle with.” For the middle girls, that would be fractions. And for the youngest, it would be time.

School usually ends by 11 a.m. for the three younger girls, Harper said, and they spend a lot of time outdoors riding bikes, jumping on the trampoline and shooting hoops.

Schooltime at the Barks house: Brooklyn works on the computer with her younger brother, Aspen.Submitted by Brittany Barks

A day at the Barks house is pretty similar. Brittney Barks is a cosmetologist at Che’ Rose Salon in Marble Hill, but she is currently not working.

She and her husband, Jeremy, have three children: Damon, a sophomore; Brooklyn, sixth grade; and Aspen, a 4-year-old who loves to work along with his older siblings.

“A typical school day in our home so far has been pretty basic with online learning, and we do paperwork that I have gotten from [Woodland School District] that the teachers have prepared for their students to have,” Barks said. “We normally do something as a group, even if it’s me reading them a story or my daughter doing her online learning. We try to start in the morning about 9ish.”

When the weather is pretty, like it has been recently, they spend their recess outdoors, writing with sidewalk chalk, riding on outdoor toys, playing with their cat and dog, and cleaning up the yard.

Her oldest son, Damon, is spending much of his time working with his father, who owns his own business, MRB Waterworks.

“What my kids miss most about school is friends and having their own structure of learning, because they know this momma didn’t go to school to be a teacher! I will definitely give teachers more respect than I ever have,” Barks said. “My time at home with my kids has so far been very beneficial. I feel it has brought our family time closer. I catch us telling more stories and all being more in the same room instead of different rooms on their phones.”