Family Learning in Times of COVID-19

Peter Jarvis is a well-known researcher in the field of adult education who spent many years writing about why learning is so important. In one of his books, he suggests:

“Learning is food, ingest it, and it will enrich the whole human being. We cannot exist without learning. Learning is almost synonymous for living.”

As we continue to navigate our new normal, we are becoming increasingly aware of both day-to-day challenges and far-reaching implications of the current situation on our emotional well-being.

COVID-19 has brought with it a pressure that families with children had never experienced before.

Containing the preschool balls of energy with no regard to social distancing and keeping them occupied is the tough place to be as a parent. With school classes now being offered online, parents are worried if they will be able to rise to the challenge of supporting their children`s learning. The Internet is full of suggestions for online activities; however, one cannot but wonder about the potentially harmful impact of too much screen time on children`s health and well-being.

“Am I doing this right?” is the most common question we heard from adults with children who participated in the past two weeks.

The purpose of this blog is to offer insights and share some family learning tools that our literacy practitioners have been using to support the emotional well-being of our program participants.

Our first tip for parents is to take 3-4 deep breaths and remember that if they are not taking good care of themselves, they will not be able to take care of their children. As such, we remind them to stay positive and know that they are strong enough to get through this.

(So, before you read any further, take 3-4 deep breaths and remember that the only way we can fully be there for our family is to be there for ourselves fully.)

The next step involves helping parents develop an awareness of how family learning can help their family continue to learn, hope and grow. Family learning is an important strategy for maintaining emotional well-being and preventing potential mental health difficulties in the future.

What we at CanLearn call family learning refers to a whole range of activities through which parents and children improve their understanding of the world by learning together as a family. Family learning activities are unplugged. The focus is on helping parents to develop a learning attitude for themselves intentionally and to begin modelling it for their children. This helps children build the attitudes, behaviours and understanding that they will carry with them into the classroom, into their adult lives, and into their own future families. Seeing their parents learn and learning together as a family will be crucial in helping children not only cope with the circumstances of our new normal but also seamlessly transition to classroom learning once the situation gets back to normal. Continuing to learn as an adult will be crucial in helping parents stay resilient and equipped for the time when nobody can predict what the future will bring.

In addition to encouraging families who participate in our programs to engage in family learning at its own pace and adapt to its own needs, our facilitators have been guiding, modelling and sharing family learning activities that parents can use with their children at their dinner table, in their living room, while preparing meals or taking walks outside.

Many of these ideas are on our website:

Download ‘Just Play’ (PDF)

Download ‘Phonological Awareness’ (PDF)
Here are more ideas for families with older children:

  • Write letters or postcards of encouragement and send them to a nursing home or your elderly neighbours
  • Create a family cookbook
  • Write Mad Libs together (for instruction go to www.redkid.net)
  • Make a list of different ways you can use a word
  • Have each family member put a “mystery object” in a paper bag and exchange the bags. Each family member then reaches into their bag and comes up with a list of descriptive words describing the object (at least four words, more if possible). You can then write a paragraph describing the object and end it with a sentence saying what you think the object is.
  • Pick a country and write a paragraph for 15 minutes of what you would like to do there on a trip. Read your stories.
  • Read an article together and then write it in your own words (paraphrase). When you are finished, compare your version with the original.
  • Interview a family member and ask them about their life. Write their biography.
  • Gather ten coins and make calculations using these coins.
  • Make a poster of 5 words you find tricky to spell. Put the tricky part in a different colour (e.g. beautiful)
  • Play multiplication ping pong with one person batting the question and the other batting back the answer.
  • Put the numbers 2, 5, 3 and 4 on separate sticky notes. Make as many different odd numbers between 4,000 and 6,000 as you can.
  • Figure out if you would rather have 3/5 of $10 or 75% of $10. Explain your thinking.
  • Go outside for some fresh air while making sure that you practice social distancing.

 

We will continue to share family learning ideas and activities in the upcoming weeks. We feel it is so important!

Learning Tools to Cope with Stress in Times of COVID-19

We are faced with a situation that has no end in sight. Across the country people’s coping skills have been pushed to their limits.

One of the difficult things about this situation is the feeling that we have no control over it. We are all worried. Telling yourself to stop worrying doesn’t work – psychology studies tell us that if you tell yourself not to think about a glass of milk, you will probably have trouble doing that.

Because our thoughts are connected with our emotions, it is not easy to think positively during these times. The more negative thoughts we have; the more we believe them, the more we believe we can’t cope.

And this is where this blog comes in.

At CanLearn, we strongly believe that all of our learning programs have a role to play in helping adults, children and families in facilitating their emotional well-being during these times of uncertainty, a role that complements the work of other professionals involved.

Last week, our staff spent time connecting with our learners, figuring out technology tools and determining why it was important to continue running our programs, as well as what aspects of our program we needed to change and how could we make change happen.

First and foremost, we are very pleased about the positive response we have received from our learners, as the majority of them have accepted our invitation to continue their programs with eagerness and gratitude. We feel that it is not enough to simply say that we want to continue supporting our learners online; we need to figure out what that means and how we can achieve it while keeping in mind that now is a time for action rather than talk.

For the time being, our literacy programs will focus their learning goals on emotional literacy – building resilience and approaching life’s challenges with optimism and hope.

“Optimism means having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations… optimism is an attitude that buffers people against apathy, hopelessness or depression in the face of tough going.” (Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, 1995)

With the quote above in mind, let us describe a few learning tools we are going to use in our literacy programs:

Writing

We will encourage to our learners to put their thoughts on paper.

Studies have shown that writing about distressing experiences can help people make sense of them and reduce negative emotions. Likewise, writing about positive or hopeful thoughts helps us to become positive because we put our attention on hope. This kind of writing leads to optimism. We will embed a variety of activities that will facilitate:

  • Gratitude writing – writing about things in their lives-no matter how small they are- for which they are grateful. These could include healthy family members, sunny skies, a friend to talk with online;
  • Visualization writing – visualizing what things would be like when things get back to normal and writing about it in positive terms, with as much detail as possible, noting the colours, sounds and sights that you find in your visualizations.

With adults writing can come in the form of journal, while with children it will come through drawing, art and play activities.

Conversations that facilitate thought shifting

We will help our learners challenge their worries with questions such as, “Is there anything at all good about the situation? (E.g. we live in a country/province that has resources to help people navigate the situation).

Laughter

Maintaining a sense of humour is important to our emotional survival in the days, weeks and months to come. We will plan activities to encourage our learners to incorporate laughter in their day, to immerse themselves in humorous books and movies and engage in light-hearted interactions with their family members.

 

Our staff will continue to proactively reflect on the both opportunities and obstacles we are likely to encounter and we will carefully navigate these as they arise.

We keep Maya Angelou’s quote in mind “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
 

Literacy Programs at CanLearn in Times of the COVID-19 Emergency

Protecting health and safety for all learners, clients, staff and volunteers is a top priority for CanLearn.

The CanLearn office is closed as our staff work from home. All of-site our community and in-home programs have been put on hold.

However, our family and adult literacy programs are not cancelled. In order to support our program participants continue to learn during the times of uncertainty, we have made modifications to our program delivery models. The programs will continue to run on-line.

With everything being cancelled to deal with the COVID-19 situation, what are we doing choosing to continue literacy programs? How and why, in the middle of an unprecedented situation, are we expecting our learners to respond? Isn’t it wise to just wait till this ends?

Reflecting on these questions, we came up with a number of reasons why it is absolutely crucial to continue learning during the times when we all have to stay home.

First and foremost, we want to help our learners maintain a tiny but important sense of normalcy during the times of turbulence and help them stay resilient and hopeful. During the times of anxiety, fear and uncertainty, it is important to connect. Due to social isolation, the COVID – 19 emergencies can have a significant negative impact of both adult and children’s emotional and psychological well-being. Parents are likely to experience stress and anxiety and may not be able to support their children’s learning as they would in normal circumstances. Adult literacy learners may experience challenges to focus on the things that are positive in their life. Continuing to learn will offer our learners a sanctuary and an opportunity to down everything else even if for a few hours each week.

Our on-line world and news are full of frightening COVID-19 stories. This is an opportunity to help our program participants learn to consider the sources of their information and to beware of the large amount of misinformation.

The outbreak of COVID-19 raises questions and concerns for all of us. We are all learning as we go and that’s OK. Opportunities for learning are endless. We can help parents learn how to talk to their young children about COVID-19 at a developmentally appropriate level. We can help parents try to make the “new normal” fun for their children. A good example is learning to wash hands long enough for two renditions remind of “Happy Birthday” song. Now is the time to strengthen digital skills and learn FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts and WhatsApp to stay connected and keep learning.

We are still there for our learners, determined to stay connected, optimistic and hopeful. One of the most important roles that we have is to help them imagine the time when our programs are able to run in-person again and when our world will be back to normal.