HOMESCHOOLING IN THE CONTEXT OF A PANDEMIC: HOW DOES THE POPULAR FAMILY COPE WITH DISTANCE EDUCATION?

In Venezuela, since March 13, a State of Alarm Decree has been in force that imposed the quarantine for COVID-19 in the national territory and the distance education methodology at all levels. This context forced us, the members of the team from the UCAB's Father Luis Azagra Psychology Unit (UPLA), to look for remote ways to maintain communication and, as far as possible, work with the families they had been receiving the psychological support service.

Most of these families come from popular communities in the west of the city of Caracas, such as La Vega, Carapita, Antímano, La Yaguara and Caricuao, among others.

From the first weeks of the quarantine, one of the first challenges we encountered in our work was to be able to generate spaces for virtual encounters with families. We ran into a lot of resistance to continue the accompaniment processes by telephone: constant refusals, unanswered messages, and postponements for another day or even for another week.

Would we be approaching families inappropriately? Were we doing something wrong in our approach?

Understanding the dynamics of what we understand as “multi-problem families” requires, firstly, having expertise in what these families experience and, as another important element, it also requires being able to see the contrasts with our experiences as workers in the mental health. Thus, we understood that for us, despite our common shortcomings as city dwellers, the anguish we reflected was not similar to that of these families.

After numerous insistences, the families began to show us how difficult it is to obtain what is necessary. They started letting us know that something is missing. And, as we resumed the bond that was interrupted by the quarantine, families were letting us know that they faced greater challenges in using their personal resources in meeting their daily demands. This is due to the fact that teleworking (or the search for economic income to support them), school "at home" and the emotional implications of a pandemic in a multi-problematic family context are now added to the difficulty in satisfying their basic needs.

Some mothers easily express one of the most common reactions in this situation: anxiety about an uncertain future around the economy, the next school year or how to face a medical emergency considering the state of the health system.

When going out in search of food or work, anguish prevails over the contagion and the possible consequences of it due to distrust of the health system. On the other hand, staying at home in “this confinement” has highlighted the emotional mobilization of them and their children: despair, sadness, fear and anger, at times, seem to be the protagonists. Families also make great efforts to maintain control and constantly seek possible solutions, thus, the future and not just the present, becomes overwhelming.

AN OVERWHELMING CONTEXT

Although the focus of our interventions is in the area of ​​school psychology, accompanying children in their processes of adaptation to the school and academic experience - as well as addressing difficulties and promoting the necessary adaptations for the development of capacities of our users–, serving families in the context of quarantine has meant a shift in the prioritization of our interventions. As psychologists, we had to recognize the limits of our work to be able to rebuild and recover the processes that for years had already been consolidated with many of our users.

In this sense, the discomfort and anguish that the families reflected to us, at times were distancing themselves from "the boys and girls", and were turning over the country. On numerous occasions, they highlighted the difficulties in accessing basic resources such as water, electricity or gas, even to pay for food. It was a difficulty to get what was necessary.

For these families, the quarantine has meant being in a state of vulnerability and lack of resources, not only financial, but also support and containment networks. All responsibility for care, which in principle we understand as a responsibility that corresponds to government institutions, also falls on the family nucleus and, in particular, on the figure of mothers, who have also been our sources of contact, conversation and I work in this period.

Along with the difficulties of the context, those who decide to attend to the day to day and downplay what will happen, do not feel exactly hopeful, but neither do they feel anxious. In some cases, mothers question their feelings and relegate their emotions to the background, since taking care of daily tasks at home and outside of it, in their context, consumes most of their energy. However, in conditions like the current ones, discouragement and despair do not take long to be noticed, against which the attachment to religion and faith are protective factors to sustain them.

THE COMPLEXITIES OF HOMESCHOOLING

"I have no patience; I have no patience at all."  "I get intense and I try to do things to him”

Inside the home, the pressures for these mothers involve new activities, such as “home school”. Many of these women told us that for them the teachers send activities, but they are not present and the mothers perceive a new need to be solved. The context urges them, once again, to reinvent themselves, whether or not they are ready to take on this role. The anxiety about assuming even more responsibilities increases and questions arise around school assignments: how to do them, how to correct their children and concern about paying for some school supplies. In this sense, one of the mothers told us:

We have used the money we have to be able to pay them and sometimes we do not have either. 200 thousand on a piece of paper, and they say to use the notebooks, but how does the little boy do that he has already run out of the notebook? "

Thus, another stressor emerges for mothers and children, and sometimes for the nuclear and extended family: the need to "catch up" with homework, to avoid delays in the formal education of their children.

José Javier Salas, director of the UCAB School of Education, in an interview with El Ucabista, expresses that considering the current situation, “school lag (...) is inevitable ". However, even if this is a fact, the implications of this lag and assuming it, from the perspective of the mothers who have been accompanied, implies long-term consequences that, at times, we are not willing to consider.

The concern about the lag is also an expression of what educational development means for the families with whom we work. Feeling that the "time to educate" is lost is for many of these women the loss of a sustained effort at the family level so that their children can improve their living conditions. The lag, in this sense, is experienced as a denial of the possibility of accessing social mobility

Considering that the educational level of the parents is an important factor in the education of their children, some mothers must make greater efforts to support school activities, since they do not have sufficient academic preparation. This sometimes contributes to increased worry and frustration. One of the mothers showed it to us saying:

It's hard not being able to help the child. From here we will both graduate”.

Frustration doesn't necessarily turn into inaction. The search for support networks with family members, nuclear or extended, has been beneficial for some of the mothers in the work of continuing with the educational training of their children. We do everything with a cell phone and she is the one who knows how to use it, at least I don't know how to search, “another mother told us.

In some homes the need to establish routines arose. Parents avoid neglecting their obligations, work or not, while attending to children's school assignments and trying to achieve this through meeting schedules. Thus, they seem to give meaning to a chaotic reality that requires abandoning the spaces that articulate the day to day. The home is reconfigured; those spaces that are usually outside are moved, becoming at the same time an office, school and recreation area. Along the same lines, the roles are transformed, generating confusion: parents do not stop being parents, but they become teachers and, likewise, children become students, but at home.

Mothers show us how they are demanding in terms of the academic process and how they also face their own limitations of children. In some cases, they express that children are “lazy ", bored, want to play when they do homework, or show difficulties in concentrating. They observe the behaviors of their children and look for alternatives to improve academic performance. However, this seems not to be enough. For these mothers it is not just about creating play spaces, new routines and places to work. The need for specialized attention to the limitations and resources of each of their children continues. This sometimes becomes a situation that exceeds them.

“I don't know what to do with it anymore. I try but it is difficult for him to concentrate and he wants to play all the time”

“With Andrés they sent him tasks and it is a process for him to do them. I have no patience; I have no patience for anything. He starts crying because one tells him that it is wrong and he has to erase it”.

According to the parents, in this situation it was easy for some children to understand home school as a vacation period. Perhaps, consequently, many families understand this attitude as “laziness”, a preference for playing and, in general, a lack of willingness to carry out school assignments, since not attending school is usually synonymous with vacations or rest.

It is a fact that mothers show they feel demanded in terms of the academic process, however, each one channels this feeling differently. For example, in contrast to a mother who makes an effort to get her son's participation, another, also concerned about meeting the demands, chooses to carry out most of the activities, assuming with some resignation that her son does not feel willing to do so. Take part. Indistinctly, once again, the mother assumes the greatest responsibility, while assigning the child shorter or less complex tasks.

"... He gets distracted or starts thinking about movies"

"I get intense and I try to do things to him"

"... He just copies them"

These may be the typical or usual approaches at home, prior to the period of confinement, however, it is worth thinking how the current situation exacerbates these feelings of demand, impatience, resignation since, clearly, the role of teacher becomes even more important.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TASK IN QUARANTINE

Since the beginning of the quarantine, numerous psychological initiatives have emerged around the world to " deal with" what it can mean to stay at home, raising, educating, living together and community conditions of each particular story.

Assuming that our job is to support people to find relief from their suffering, the context of quarantine questioned us in multiple ways. How can we do our work without having face-to-face contact with families? Can psychology contribute to improvement in these circumstances?

The families showed us again and again how the psychological recommendations in quarantine and the universal recipes for mental health had clear limits in their experiences, since the vulnerability and precariousness in which they find themselves are deeply stressful factors and, in many cases, also potentially traumatic events.

Given the numerous recommendations that we managed to compile from different sources and places, we saw how each attempt to establish a new “practice” or “routine” from our knowledge fell apart as days went by. We saw the limitations to have a phone call, because, in many cases, digital media (What’s App, Zoom, Skype ) are not available and suggesting them is also a source of shame, " we don't have that here ."

These impositions of a reality different from ours invited us to resort to the most unique element of psychological and therapeutic work: listening. In our own anguish to seek the well-being and support of families, it was the families who made us return to the basics of our work, without resorting to shortcuts, tips or decontextualized practices. Listening has undoubtedly been the engine of our interventions.