Mom Pens Viral Thread On Why She's No Longer Homeschooling Her Son During The Pandemic

As schools across the country remain closed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, millions of parents have suddenly found themselves tasked with the new job of trying to homeschool their children while also working from home. The new reality has prompted some to make the difficult decision to just stop, such as archaeologist and Egyptologist Sarah Parcak. In a viral thread on Twitter, the working mom explained that she's not going to homeschool her son any longer and she and her husband are ending his school year early to protect "his well being."

"We just wrote a hard email," Parcak began in a viral Twitter thread on Wednesday. "I told our son’s (lovely, kind, caring) teacher that, no, we will not be participating in her 'virtual classroom,' and that he was done with the 1st grade. We cannot cope with this insanity. Survival and protecting his well being come first."

Parcak said that she and her husband both work full time and she is currently working on several projects at once. "I also help run my non profit AND manage a complex project in Egypt AND am running a Covid-19 tracking platform," she wrote. "So, his happiness trumps crappy math worksheet management." Parcak explained in a follow-up tweet that in addition to working, cooking, and housework duties, "managing his education is a bridge too far right now."

"The thought of homeschooling makes me want to barf," she added. "It’s a f*cking joke."

Parcek went on to say that without a virtual classroom, her son reads "a lot" while also getting in some imaginative play time with his dad. "He reads a lot. Plays outside a lot. We read to him a lot and talk to him a lot. He gets history lessons," Parcek wrote. "There is an app where he can choose books to be read to him. We watch a fun movie every night. He plays playmobile with my husband (mega imagination)."

Several parents responded to her thread to share their own two cents about how homeschooling their kids was simply too much for them on top of everything else right now. Sharing a photo of her child's complicated homework sheet, one mom commented on the thread, "This is my Kindergarteners home school curriculum. And nearly everything requires a printer, which we don’t have. We quit."

Another pointed out that trying to homeschool multiple children in different grades at different schools was just too much considering the circumstances. "Our school system is really thinking hard here, but I have 3 kids at 3 diff stages in 3 diff schools and both of us parents trying to juggle our jobs from home, with other stuff going on in addition to the constant impending doom," another mom wrote. "We. Need. Space."

In another tweet, Parcek said that she absolutely respects teachers and is in no way criticizing them with her decision to not homeschool her son during the pandemic. She wrote, "pay them a million dollars a year they are incredible I cannot do what they do."

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