So today was the 5th day of “school” and Jonah has developed an aversion to ‘remote learning.’

Today, he instantly escalated as soon as he saw his teachers. He went and hid, burying his face in the couch while screaming, and chucked a Matchbox car at the screen for good measure.

I had to put Jonah’s computer on ‘mute,’ both outgoing and incoming, and pulled the screen’s brightness down to black, essentially giving the appearance that the computer is “off.”

It was like that most of the day. The class would see Jonah coming and going but they wouldn’t be able to interact at all.

We tried again at various points in the day.

Eventually, Jonah tolerated the remote classroom (while on mute) for about an hour, with the screen ALMOST black, but still recognizable as the zoom interface.

He was running back and forth completely ignoring the laptop.

And I would consider that a victory for today.

He even waved goodbye today, with the sound on and everything.

Afterwards, he got to play in Auntie’s homemade ball pit.

sigh

Why do we even try?

Because even though we are not doing anything academically, the teacher needs to record the data for so many weeks in order to have the POSSIBILITY of petitioning for an exception for in-person learning.

This is school. 2020.

#ausome
Original Facebook Post.