“What am I to do?” An oral history of mothering children in online school

NYF: What’s the best and worst thing about doing school all online?

Jada: In the pandemic, basically, when you’re going to online school, you have to maintain different things, like your social life, you have to maintain your mental health, and you also have to do your school work. You have to get that turned in on time. There’s also the strict teachers that don’t give you no extra time. Sometimes you go to turn in your assignment, and you press “Turn in,” but for some reason it doesn’t go through and then they say you never turned it in, but you just are sitting there, like, “I did.”

But the best part is getting to figure myself out, how I want to be, what I want to do. As to how I want to develop myself. Before quarantine and everything, I was like, one of those girls, that’s chill and laid back, but then I could get rowdy really quick. During quarantine, I realized there’s no purpose to doing all that. You should try to figure out how who you wanna be before you completely settle with who you are. My attitude changed this quarantine. I started watching anime, I started skateboarding.

Chastity: You know, when you’re at school, you try to fit in sometimes. So I think that time spent away from school has changed her as a person. I’m proud that she’s changed, but it’s still an issue coping.

And yeah, for me, the best thing, I love staying home and spending time with my babies. When they’re at school, I was always at work. But now I can spend time with them, hang out, have movie time, make TikToks.

The worst thing is I just haven’t been able to go back to work. My job closed down, so it’s been hard to find another job. And I’ve been behind on my bills — rent, [Jada’s] medicine, WiFi, credit cards. Trying to buy stuff for them to wear for the winter. It’s hard. I have unemployment, but it’s only $140 [a week]. I really can’t do anything with $140. It doesn’t even cover my phone bill.

My mom works, and there’s no one else to watch them. But I’d rather max out my credit cards and make sure they have everything they need than make them go without that.

Anonymous

I got four kids. The two twins are 14 years old, in high school, and one who’s eight years old, and one who’s a baby. It’s only one room—we live in one room. So it’s not like they have their own rooms to do their work. I cannot work at all. I can’t work because I have to be in the house to make sure my kids are online and doing their work. I can’t get family members to help because they’re all in the same situation, my brother got kids… they all have the same problem. I’m a single mom.

Especially the teenagers, I have to watch when they go out, you know. I’m the security guard, a mother, a father, a teacher, I’m everything. And I got other things to do at home, like chores, make food, I can’t pay attention to them all the time. You don’t even got time for yourself.

They used to have daycare and I would work then pick up at their schools. I was working at the beginning. Then when they decided to go online, everything got complicated. April was the last month that I worked. I do miss my work, I don’t want to be home all day. It’s sad to be at home all day in the four walls. I went out today to buy stuff for them—ah, I feel relief!

Maybe they should just shut down school, and just open when everything’s ready. It’s less stress for both sides. The teachers get stressed cause they want everyone online. Sometimes the internet doesn’t work and my kids get marked absent, absent, absent.

We argue with the kids to make sure they go online, but my eight year old doesn’t want to go online. He goes to sleep while he’s online.

The teachers call me all the time from four different schools—“they didn’t log in, they didn’t log in, they didn’t log in.” I can’t live right. My mind cannot be settled.

Raven

It’s hard for my son to pay attention. It’s his first year in school. He just started kindergarten, so he never had the experience of a classroom. When he goes onto the iPad and stuff, he doesn’t really pay attention, or he’s, like, looking… I feel like he’s a little behind on certain things. And it’s kinda hard on me cause I have another baby. So when he’s on, I’m chasing the other one around. They have to sign off and on four times. And they’re on for fifteen minutes at each time. So it’s not like real school. For me, it’s like a job. I’m the one that has to submit the work.

NYF: Has this affected your work at all?

With my work, I had to take a temporary leave of absence. I’m a flight attendant and when COVID first started they instituted travel bans and stuff like that. I can’t work right now due to him not being at [physical] school. I don’t have anyone to stay home and take care of him. My mom would help me before, but now she has to be online with my younger sisters and there’s three of them—and she said, you know, “I can’t take on the responsibility of taking on all of them and three younger kids.”

NYF: Without work, where does that leave you in terms of income?

I don’t have any—and it’s been hard to get a hold of the airline because they still owe me money for back pay. I qualify for unemployment, but when I went to apply for it, they didn’t give it to me for, like, two months after I applied. I was going through a lot. I couldn’t get food stamps, I couldn’t get anything. I couldn’t go in person, I had to fill out [the food stamp application] online. It was taking forever, like a month and a half. During that time, I was going to food pantries. It was bad.

And with the courts being closed, I can’t go put my children’s father on child support. He’s a professional athlete, and before COVID he was helping me – but the courts have been closed since March, and he hasn’t given me a dollar since.

My friend sent me two hundred dollars. I tried to make it last. But I was sometimes spending a hundred dollars a day, basic life, you know. I remember having to wipe their butt with a towel cause I couldn’t afford toilet paper and stuff.

I don’t know how I’m getting by (laughs). I mean, look, I don’t even have socks for my kids right now. I’m kinda going through a little depression with everything that’s going on right now, you know.

That’s affected my kids a little bit. If I’m stressed out, and I’m depressed, I wanna sleep, I’m not in the mood for anything, then it’s like, that affects my children.

It’s started getting cold outside — I can’t afford to pay for a jacket. So I have to get jackets that people give to me. But you see how big that jacket is on him, and on him? Maybe they don’t notice it, but it bothers me. It affects me. I want them to have their own jackets.