I keep talking about these kids being screwed, education wise, and I have to admit that as safe as mine are because they have us providing back-up, it can still get quite tense. I am referring to kids having to learn in their homes instead of being at school with the teachers to provide guidance and concrete examples. So far, Baby Jesus has not needed us for much, in the way of help. He has come to us with a little Spanish homework, and it has been pretty easy, for us, we speak Spanish well enough so it is not a problem. The other one he has asked me for help is his pre-calculus class, which is just Algebra II in fancy clothes. I tutored Algebra for two years and a few summers, so I can handle most basic algebra stuff well enough as well.
Last night, I was obsessing over the idea of decorating a new Halloween/Christmas tree for this year. Wife showed me some trees themed around Nightmare Before Christmas and I went out to At Home, which is the old Garden Ridge because they have a huge assortment of Christmas trees and decorations. I really didn't like the idea of paying $300 for a black tree but I have to admit it looked really cool with its LED lights glowing a soft blue hue on black. If one is doing a Nightmare Before Christmas theme, then you need decorations in those colors. I did not find any dark purple sashing or dark green colored lights, which I think match the theme. I was looking for that on Amazon after we had gone upstairs to bed, kind of falling in and out of sleep as Wife continued watching some crappy musical show as she painted her nails.
Baby Jesus walks in and hits the bed since I was more asleep than awake but I still had the mouse in my hand and the laptop was on. He casually asked me for how to calculate the atomic mass of Calcium and all of a sudden I am ON. Time to be the smart "know it all dad" that I am always bragging about except I can't think straight, I also have to kind of pee and all the ideas of chemistry are a fog in my head. I followed him to his room, looked at the problem hoping there were more context clues to shake an answer out of me as I am doing the pee-pee dance. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and I am in a panic because I kind of know what he is talking about, but "come on, Man." It took me a couple of times of going back and forth before I could figure what he was talking about and the teacher wanted. It sucks because I even work with the numbers we were looking for, I am a chemist and our work almost always calls for looking at calcium concentrations in solutions so I know the number is around 40, but I couldn't figure what he needed off the top of my head. Once I found some examples online, I was then able to figure what the question was asking for.
This was a challenge for me and I have a degree and work in the field, I don't know how the common lay person is able to help their kids on a regular basis. Even looking at an example on Google, which has helped me every time to knock my head in the right direction, might not be enough if the parents of random kids were never trained to do the work. We really need to get this Covid-19 under control and get these kids back in school where they belong. I love my boy and helping him has been fun, but the older one got to a point in Calculus that I could not help him any more a couple years ago, the intricacies and specific rules were just too much to remember after twenty years. I don't want Baby Jesus to go through that because of Covid and being stuck at home.
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