Kent Gardens Elementary Faculty (by using Google Maps)
McLean family members are no strangers to overcrowded faculties.
The issues have been concentrated in the McLean Superior Faculty pyramid, where the household of the Highlanders and feeder university Kent Gardens Elementary have been about ability for the previous ten years.
At 121{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} capacity, Kent Gardens is dealing with a single of the greatest space deficits in the county, trailing only Wakefield Forest Elementary College (132{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}) and Oakton Superior University (125{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}), according to Fairfax County Public Schools’ proposed Funds Advancement Application for fiscal several years 2023-2027.
Potential Deficits Projected to Carry on
Kent Gardens experienced 1,023 college students to commence this school 12 months in a making designed for up to 896 pupils. The school’s profile suggests that enrollment has dipped to 1,019 college students as of November.
There are presently 11 short-term lecture rooms on website, with the most latest addition of trailers coming in the course of the 2019-2020 college year.
According to the CIP, Kent Gardens has been in excess of capability because at the very least 2012, when it experienced 906 learners and was at 111{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} ability. Whilst enrollment is expected to decline more than the following five a long time, the faculty will still be at 118{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} ability with 1,003 students by the 2026-2027 university yr.
McLean Significant College has had more pupils than program potential since the 2011-2012 faculty year. The introduction of a 12-classroom modular before this yr served slash the capacity deficit from 118{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} previous 12 months to 107{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} this fall, although enrollment appears to have developed from 2,347 college students in September to 2,366 learners, as of November.
Enrollment projections for the McLean Higher School pyramid through school yr 2026-2027 (via FCPS)
FCPS claims it is monitoring the school’s ability right after employing a phased boundary adjustment in September that moved an estimated 190 superior college college students and 78 middle college students to the Langley Significant School pyramid.
Even so, the CIP signifies that overcrowding will persist at the very least by means of 2026-2027, when 2,317 learners are projected to be enrolled and the faculty will be at 105{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} or 121{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} ability, dependent on regardless of whether the modular is nevertheless in position.
What FCPS Is Performing
FCPS claims it is analyzing five attainable alternatives for addressing overcrowding at Kent Gardens:
Increase performance by reassigning educational spaces inside of a faculty
Doable program adjustments
Repurpose current faculty services not now getting made use of as colleges or build a new college facility
Potential improvement by means of either a modular or setting up addition
Prospective boundary adjustment with other educational facilities discovered as acquiring a ability surplus
According to a spokesperson, FCPS has revised its Twin Language Immersion Lottery to take additional college students in Kent Gardens’ boundaries, commencing with the 2022-2023 university yr. The adjust will boost the school’s system capacity of 848 pupils, if not its style ability.
With Tysons expected to double its inhabitants around the next handful of many years and downtown McLean gearing for considerable redevelopment, FCPS is making ready for the influx of people by developing new elementary universities in Dunn Loring and Tysons, along with repurposing the Pimmit Hills Heart.
The reduction promised by those tasks will not occur for a even though, though. Construction on Dunn Loring Elementary Faculty isn’t envisioned to end until 2026, and FCPS isn’t organizing to request funding for the Tysons and Pimmit Hills schools until 2027.
It also remains to be found who will profit from the new universities, since they will not be assigned pyramids until finally boundary scientific tests can be conducted, which takes place to the end of construction, in accordance to FCPS.
The Langley and Marshall superior university pyramids, which provide the McLean and Tysons spots, respectively, aren’t experiencing the exact crowding as McLean, while Spring Hill Elementary School is projected to achieve 101{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} capability in 2026-2027.
Enrollment projections for the Langley Large School pyramid via college calendar year 2026-2027 (by means of FCPS)Enrollment projections for the Marshall Superior Faculty pyramid through faculty 12 months 2026-2027 (by means of FCPS)
Enrollment in FCPS total is projected to decrease from 176,212 college students this year to 174,326 students in the 2026-2027 faculty calendar year.
The global serious games market was valued at USD 6.29 billion in 2020, and it is expected to reach a value of USD 25.54 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 26.37{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} over the forecast period 2021 – 2026.
Companies Mentioned
Designing Digitally Inc.
Diginext (CS Group)
CCS Digital Education Ltd
Applied Research Associate Inc.
Grendel Games
Cisco Systems
Revelian
MPS Interactive Systems
Can Studios Ltd
L.I.B. Businessgames BV
Tygron BV
Triseum LLC
Key Market Trends
Learning and Education Application to Witness Significant Growth
In the recent past, digital games and simulations have gained popularity for being the most powerful and highly engaging learning environment. The production of these serious games requires complex and dynamic constructs with appropriate designs of multimodal context and engaging interactions and productive pedagogical strategies to preserve learning efficacy.
Moreover, in the education and learning ecosystem, the need for game concepts, such as challenges, rules, scores, competition, and levels, is encouraging vendors to develop solutions to address and accommodate the principal pedagogical functional variables, such as instructional support, feedback, guidance, self-regulation, attention, cognitive flow, and assessment.
Further, Grandel Games developed a serious game that achieves behavioral change. For instance, one of the games, ‘Garfield’s Count Me In,’ is designed for students in primary education and helps them do repetitive math exercises. It is based on the learning methodology ‘Het Rekenmuurtje’ (‘Math Wall’) and specially designed by educational advisers.
In April 2020, the Indiana Department of Education in the United States announced the Rose-Hulman’s PRISM program to provide school teachers across Indiana with valuable e-learning resources and summer professional development workshops. The program aims to create an online library with more than 6,000 free online teaching resources, which will enable teachers to share lesson plans with other school districts with the help of digital tools, such as serious gaming, among others.
Further, in May 2021, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) launched a new educational game known as CyberSprinters for teaching cyber security at primary schools, clubs, and youth organizations. The CyberSprinters is an interactive game aimed at 7 to 11-year-olds learners.
Asia Pacific to Hold Significant Market Share
The growing awareness regarding serious games or Game-based Learning (GBL) concept, increasing investment by big players into the segment, and growing demand for mobile-based serious gaming are some of the major factors driving the growth of serious games in the Asia-Pacific region. The recent COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdowns, along with governments boosting educational gaming in the country, are some of the opportunities that are expected to boost the adoption of serious games in the region over the forecast period.
Serious games are emerging as a powerful learning tool and are experiencing increasing popularity in recent times, owing to the cost-effective alternative to classroom-based learning for knowledge acquisition, as well as perceptual, behavioral, cognitive, affective, motivational, physiological, and social learning outcomes.
The healthcare industry had been one of the targeted industries for the increased usage of serious games. With the aid of simulation and visualization technologies, serious games now have the capability to teach multidisciplinary healthcare professionals key procedural and cognitive skills in an engaging manner.
To enable the development and implementation of serious games in healthcare, SIMS (SingHealth Institute of Medical Simulation) collaborated with the Serious Games Association (SGA), a non-profit serious games and game technology society in Singapore, to provide healthcare professionals with the ability to apply gamification in healthcare.
The previous collaborations with SGA include the SIMS Games Challenge 2019, a serious healthcare simulation game competition, which observed healthcare professionals submitting concepts and developing prototypes of simulation games. SIMS and SGA had also announced a collaboration to organize RICH Games 2022, a conference for the Southeast Asian region, which offers emerging solutions and innovations to advance healthcare education.
Key Topics Covered:
1 INTRODUCTION
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
4 MARKET INSIGHTS
4.1 Market Overview
4.2 Industry Attractiveness – Porter’s Five Forces Analysis
4.3 Technology Snapshot
5 MARKET DYNAMICS
5.1 Market Drivers
5.1.1 Growing Usage of Mobile-based Educational Games
5.1.2 Improved Learning Outcomes are Expected to Increase the Adoption of Serious Game Among End Users
5.2 Market Restraints
5.2.1 Lack of Assessment Tools to Measure Serious Game Effectiveness
5.3 Assessment of Impact of COVID-19 on the Industry
Raegan Mayfield’s 11-year-old son was doing well in his Christian private school, but Mayfield and her husband felt there were gaps in how his history classes addressed racial subjects. They supplemented his education at home, but then COVID-19 concerns and racial issues became front and center in spring 2020. “My husband and I became really protective of our son,” Mayfield said.
The couple, who live in Georgia and work from home, began looking into homeschooling options. “We wanted to keep the Biblically sound education but then also diversify his education a bit,” Mayfield said.
Finding Heritage Homeschoolers, a group for African American homeschoolers in the Atlanta area, gave Mayfield the encouragement she needed. She and her husband began homeschooling their son in fall 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic drove an increase in homeschooling across all demographics, but the boost was particularly large among African American families. According to Census Bureau data, the percentage of black families educating children at home grew
fivefold in six months, from 3.3 percent in April 2020 to 16.1 percent in October 2020.
Steven Duvall, director of research at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said that in previous years African American families homeschooled at about half the rate of white families. But more recent surveys show the black homeschooling rate is only a couple of percentage points behind that of white families. “It just shows you how diversified the homeschool movement has become,” Duvall said.
That shift began even before 2020. According to a 2015 report
by Brian Ray at the National Home Education Research Institute, the number of black homeschooling families “nearly doubled from 1999 to 2012.”
Amber O’Neal Johnston, who helped start the Heritage Homeschoolers group the Mayfields joined, said she has seen more black families involved since she started homeschooling about seven years ago, but the growth has exploded in the past two years. Heritage Homeschoolers opens registration to new families twice a year, in January and August, and in 2019 and early 2020, the group received fewer than 20 applications in each of those months. Since August 2020, though, 34 to 41 new families have applied each month registration is open.
Before starting Heritage Homeschoolers, Johnston and her husband were involved with another homeschool group. They enjoyed it, despite being the only black family there. But their daughter began to say negative things about her own skin and hair and stopped playing with her black dolls. “It’s not like anyone had been mean to her,” Johnston said. “It wasn’t like she had been somewhere where people were saying negative things about black people.”
The Johnstons never left their first homeschooling group, but they decided to look for other black homeschooling families. Soon Heritage Homeschoolers was born, and it kept growing. It now serves 94 families with 280 children.
In March 2020, Khadijah Ali-Coleman defended her doctoral dissertation on perceptions of community college preparedness among dual-enrolled African American homeschooling students. Ali-Coleman homeschooled her daughter for a while and co-founded Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, a research group that provides virtual training for parents. In her research, Ali-Coleman identified several reasons black parents chose to homeschool, including concerns that schools aren’t properly teaching about black history and convictions that parents could better protect their child’s self-esteem at home.
Emily Powell, a representative for National Black Home Educators, said in an email that the organization has “seen incredible growth” this year. According to Powell, many new families are homeschooling due to COVID-19 restrictions, virtual learning situations, or concerns about schools teaching critical race theory.
Jasper and Deah Abbott prayed about their son’s education after his prekindergarten year ended with virtual learning in spring 2020. Deah said that four generations of her family have taught in public schools, but the Abbotts’ concerns about COVID-19 and virtual instruction convinced them to give homeschooling a try. They pulled their son out of public school in fall 2020, the weekend before he would have started kindergarten.
Deah is white and Jasper is black. In some homeschool circles, their son may be the only brown-skinned person. “He feels that—that otherness,” she said.
The family also joined Heritage Homeschoolers. Abbott thinks her son may benefit even more from the group than most children.
Johnston believes the uptick in homeschooling will continue, especially now that there are more support groups and options for single or working parents.
“Parents have had an opportunity to see their children just flourish at home,” she said. “When everyone was forced to bring the kids home, black families, in large numbers, saw how beautiful it was.”
The presence and strength of state physical education (P.E.) laws positively affected P.E. attendance and the frequency and duration of physical activity throughout the day, suggests a new analysis from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
An also wrote an editorial on policy and physical activity published in the issue.
Physical activity among children and adolescents has been an indispensable way to prevent childhood obesity and mental illnesses, An said. Currently, over three-quarters of children and adolescents in the U.S. don’t meet the guidelines-recommended daily physical activity level — at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day of the week, he said.
“In the meantime, nearly half of children and adolescents exceed two hours per day of sedentary behavior,” An said. “The gender disparity is also prominent — 28{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of boys meet the guidelines-recommended level of physical activity, whereas only 20{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of girls do.”
Despite the promising policy effect, state laws mandating P.E. participation have seen a sharp decline by school grade level — only 15{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}, 9{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} and 6{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of students in elementary, middle and high schools in the U.S., respectively, are required to take P.E. classes on three or more days a week during the entire academic year, An said.
“Our analysis shows that state P.E. laws affected girls’ physical activity more than boys’,” he said, “It is possible that girls are less likely to take P.E. as an elective course so that mandating P.E. increases girls’ P.E. time more substantially than boys.”
“Not all laws are born equal,” An said. “Different aspects of state P.E. laws tended to affect students’ P.E. attendance differently. Certain parts of the laws could be counterproductive — reducing rather than increasing students’ P.E. attendance.”
Based on An’s earlier work published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, state laws governing P.E. class time, staffing for P.E., joint use agreement for physical activity, assessment of health-related fitness and P.E. curriculum all were associated with increased weekly P.E. attendance.
In contrast, state laws governing physical activity time in P.E., P.E. proficiency and recess time were associated with reduced P.E. attendance. “For example, mandating fitness tests could raise concerns and anxiety and reinforce peer pressure and a competitive atmosphere among students. Consequently, some students may choose to skip P.E. to avoid performance assessment,” An explained.
An conducts research to assess environmental influences and population-level interventions on weight-related behaviors and outcomes throughout the life course. He is an expert on physical activity and the sedentary lifestyle.
A total of 17 studies were included in the review, and five contributed to the meta-analyses. Eight used nationally representative school- or student-level data; three focused on multiple states; and the remaining six examined the P.E. laws of a single state.
An and his co-authors, Jianxiu Liu and Ruidong Liu of Tsinghua University in China, found that some states have policy waivers that may exempt children from P.E. attendance in school.
“Some of those policy waivers could compromise students’ participation in P.E. and their physical activity levels at school,” An said. “Based on the available evidence, states should implement strong evidence-based P.E. laws to increase P.E. attendance and promote physical activity engagement among school students.”
A new Sonora clinic offering medication, therapy and treatment for those dealing with opioid addiction is slated to open in March on Pauline Court — a stone’s throw from Sonora Elementary School.
The treatment center is a welcome presence to some, but a concern for others in the community.
“I see it as a benefit to the community,” said Dr. Eric Sergienko, health officer for Tuolumne and Mariposa counties. “We have people in our community who are addicted to opioids. What we know is it is a facility to help people maintain sobriety, to keep people off drugs.”
It would be run by a company called Pinnacle Treatment Centers, which acquired another California-based company called Aegis Treatment Centers early last year to allow for the expansion of the business to the West Coast, according to the Pinnacle’s website.
Aegis, founded in 1982, is billed as a leading provider of outpatient opioid treatment programs, offering counseling and medication-assisted treatment (MAT). There are currently 35 facilities throughout California, including locations in Ceres, Lodi, Fresno, Manteca, Merced, Modesto, Stockton and Tracy.
Treatment at the area clinics can include residential/inpatient rehabilitation; intensive outpatient program; partial hospitalization; recovery houses; counseling; group therapy; medically assisted detox; methadone; suboxone and vivitrol, according to Pinnacle.
Sergienko understands the concerns of those who oppose the treatment center’s location, but he wants the public to know that it is less of a “methadone clinic” and more like a “medical office.”
“People won’t randomly be dropping in,” he said. “Patients will have to make an appointment. There will be a concierge to monitor the situation.
“People who want to get off drugs, stay off drugs, go to these clinics. I don’t see the clinic increasing crime in the area. It’s not like what you see on TV.”
Tami Beall, superintendent of Sonora Elementary School District, said she’s supportive of having an opioid treatment center, just not in the location on Pauline Court near the school.
“I think parents will be outraged. We have students who are 4 years old,” she said. “The clinic’s location is less than 50 feet from the school.”
Officials at the City of Sonora’s Community Development Department could not be reached on Thursday for questions about permitting and zoning of the center. A representative for Pinnacle Treatment Centers also could not be reached.
The biggest concern for Beall is the way she found out about the treatment center.
“How come we heard about this second hand?” she asked. “School Counselor Emily Vieira talked to me about it, after a doctor brought this to her attention. Why wasn’t I contacted directly?”
According to Beall, a Zoom meeting took place earlier in the week between eight of the treatment center’s representatives, as well as one doctor, Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools Cathy Parker and Sergienko to address the concerns over the clinic’s location.
“They (Pinnacle/Aegis representatives) have no concerns about being close to a school,” Beall said. “None.”
School representatives asked the company during the Zoom meeting to buy them a $4,500 camera to monitor the situation once the treatment center opens in March, since they don’t have a camera in that area, according to Beall.
“I was told our clients are confidential. They said they can’t,” she explained. “We want to angle the camera at our students, not at their clients.”
Though the camera was not an option, Beall said the company did offer the elementary school a concierge service — basically a “security guard” — to watch over the clinic, which will be open 7 days a week, from 6 a.m. to 10 or 11 a.m., she said.
Beall and the other representatives attending the Zoom call happily accepted the offer of a monitor, she said.
The property on Pauline Court is currently being remodeled, Beall said.
Clients will have to have a referral from the county Public Health Department, according to Beall, who was told that the program would start small with just 20 people.
Her concern is that the number of patients seems low and that the company may be trying to “soften the blow.”
Beall’s fear is that the patient numbers will get much higher. One concierge to monitor the clinic’s clients, as well as her students, doesn’t seem like enough security, she said.
The company agreed to hold a virtual town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Nov. 30 via Zoom. Concerned parents are asked to submit their questions for the medical company prior to Nov. 29 (see info box for details).
“This (the treatment center) is definitely a need for our community,” Beall said. “They just need to put it some place else.”
Town hall meeting information:
Pinnacle/Aegis Virtual Town Hall Meeting via ZoomTuesday, Nov 30, 2021at 6 p.m.
Meeting ID: 860 8313 7170
Submit questions for the meeting by Nov. 29 to: Cassandra Keuning, [email protected] or call 209-532-5491, ext. 4085.
Ashley Jacobs moved to Columbia with her family in July 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. At the time, her oldest child was going into kindergarten, and they had to make a decision about her education.
Originally, she was set to enroll in a traditional school, but the coronavirus interrupted that plan.
“Once we looked, we really weren’t comfortable with what seemed to sometimes be kind of a casual response to implementing and enforcing COVID-19,” Jacobs said.
Her daughter has never enrolled in public school, and now the Jacobses are homeschooling both of their girls with no intention to change.
“We were looking for a space that our girls could be celebrated for who they are, feel welcomed, feel included, feel comfortable, affirmed, accepted, you know, all those things,” Jacobs said.
Levi Scott sighs as he works out long division in his head Nov. 1 at his home in Columbia. “Home-schooling takes learning your child’s learning style,” said his mother, Jolanda Scott, left. “So, for him, he prefers when I don’t instruct. He’s very, very independent.”
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
Since the start of the pandemic, the number of children of color who have switched to homeschooling has increased by 400{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in Missouri, according to the Show Me Institute in St. Louis. A Census Bureau Pulse Survey found an uptick in home-schooling, from 5.4{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in the spring of 2020 to 11.1{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} that fall.
In Missouri, Black families switching to homeschooling rose from 3.3{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in the spring of 2020 to 16.1{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} last fall. Health and safety during the pandemic were significant factors, but the racial tension that erupted in the summer of 2020 contributed as well.
Because Jacobs was home-schooled in high school, it “was not this foreign idea,” she said. “It was on my radar as far as my own children.”
The Jacobs family
As a family of faith, the Jacobses used prayer to help decide that home-schooling was the best option they could offer their children at the time.
“Every year we pray about it again and explore our options again because we don’t feel like there’s one way and only one way every year,” Jacobs said.
A learning calendar and list of organism classifications hang on the wall in the dining room of the Scott house. “Over the last three years, we’ve gone through different curriculums and have settled on our current one because of his learning style,” Jolanda Scott said of her son Levi.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
She said she likes the flexible pace of home-schooling and the personal attention she can give to her daughters, Alana, 7, and Aliya, 4.
“I love how I can literally see with my own eyes their progress and what areas they’re weak in,” she said. “We can speed up or slow down. I’m intentional about pulling learning moments throughout the day to support what they’re learning.”
A typical day starts early, with Ashley waking up Alana, 7, and Aliya, 4, between 7 and 7:30 a.m. and making time for prayer.
“They have literally a little schedule on the wall that has pictures for my daughter who can’t read yet that go through the routine of making their bed, brushing their teeth, getting dressed,” Jacobs said.
Class starts at 9:30 a.m. in a separate room that has been rearranged to look like a classroom. Aliya goes through her daily numbers, letters and shapes for daily reinforcement, while Alana takes piano virtually.
They learn the basics in math, language arts, break for PE and end the school day between 3 and 5 p.m.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Jacobs said. “If we want to kind of shift things around, we can.”
Levi Scott stands in the doorway of his kitchen as he waits for dinner Nov. 3 in Columbia. Currently in sixth grade and home-schooled, Levi is learning math and science at his grade level, while taking 12th grade English.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
Social media gives her a tool to have her children mingle with other home-schoolers in spaces such as libraries, playgrounds and science centers. They are, in essence, field trips.
In becoming their teacher, Jacobs said she was challenged by the different ways her girls learn.
“One child is more of a kinesthetic learner, and the other one’s not, so figuring out what’s going to work best for my child was the first challenge,” she said.
Jacobs and her husband will continue to reevaluate the situation every year, but she encourages parents to consider the option.
“There’s a lot of support out there if somebody wants to do it,” she said.
The Scott family
Jolanda Scott is a mother of five, with three still in school. Two of her sons, Gideon and Levi, are twice-exceptional, meaning they are gifted students who also have a disability. Her daughter Naomi was not yet in elementary school during the pandemic.
The Scott family stands in the kitchen while Jolanda Scott makes chili and cornbread Nov. 3 in Columbia. Because the family is often busy with schooling, extracurriculars and other obligations, many of the household duties are shared.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
All three were home-schooled during the height of COVID-19. Afterward, Gideon went back to school, Naomi started public school and Levi remained at home.
“(Gideon) thrives in the academic environment, but he wasn’t being challenged to pay attention to what he was doing,” said Scott, a former third-grade teacher at Blue Ridge Elementary School.
“I brought him home so he could learn how to do his work with precision and not just show that he understood the concept, and not just, kind of like, this was fun.”
Gideon has now entered the eighth grade and is able to pay attention and advocate for himself to make corrections, she said. He has also been placed in several advanced placement classes.
“It’s giving him the rigor that he needs, and he’s allowed to do more extracurriculars than we are when we’re home-schooled,” his mother said.
“He’s able to get the interaction that he’s been looking for; that’s really been the benefit of putting him back in public school as he was just missing people.”
A learning calendar and list of organism classifications hang on the wall in the dining room of the Scott house Nov. 4 in Columbia.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
Levi is in the sixth grade, learning math and science at his grade level and also managing 12th grade English. Scott decided staying home would be more productive for him.
“There are days that he is like super chill … and there’s days that he can cuss out a sailor. I’m, like, home’s a really great idea for you,” Scott said.
Both COVID-19 and racial tensions played a role in the family deciding to pull both Gideon and Levi from traditional school. Gideon wanted to return earlier, but Scott had reservations at the time.
“At that point I’m like, ‘There’s no way in hell that I’m putting my sweet-natured Black boy in a predominantly white school on the south side of town without being sure enough to know who he is,” she said.
Teaching at home during the pandemic was an opportunity to introduce the full scope of history to her children, she said, including the impact of women and other cultures.
“A big win was to really be able to give them value in who they are as Black men and not be afraid, but know how to be respected, to know when they’re being sold a line and how to speak up for what truth is,” she said.
Two of Levi’s siblings, Naomi Scott, left, and Gideon Scott, right, attend public school. Jolanda and her husband place emphasis on the children’s ability to choose their educational wants.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
Surrounding the boys with material that is inclusive was important to Scott. When they first came home because of the pandemic, she had them read a lot of books about different cultures.
They learned about Black men, Black women, Afghan women and Hispanic women, as well as Asian cultures.
“A lot of women, she said, because they’re going to see the value of men everywhere.”
At the same time, the George Floyd protests were spreading across the country.
“(Levi) had made some comment that if he got pulled over, there’s a chance that he’s going to get killed anyway,” Scott said.
She quickly went to Facebook in search of friends married to police officers who could talk to her son.
Levi Scott watches a gaming YouTube video on his phone after dinner Nov. 3. Levi typically spends his downtime either watching YouTube videos, anime or chatting with online friends on Discord.
Ciara McCaskill/Missourian
“Our friend comes over, white man, and sits down at the table with my then 10-year-old.” she said. “They have like an hour and a half conversation where my kid is able to ask somebody of another culture, why are Black men getting killed in the streets?”
During this talk, Levi discovered that the officer served in Iraq. Levi had just read “The Breadwinner,” about an Afghan girl who secretly earns money to buy food for her family. He was able to ask the former soldier about the Taliban.
“Those are big-deal moments that we have,” Scott said. “Ask your questions, and let’s go find a person that’s lived it.”
As a certified teacher, she has found that the only difference between traditional schooling and home-schooling is the learning style.
“It’s so much based on the kids’ personalities. And so because I know all three of them are going to be able to thrive in the environments they’re in educationally, they’ll get what they need,” Scott said.
Scott works at Christian Fellowship, a multiethnic and multicultural church. Her family also attends worship there, which she believes is important for her children.
“You’re going to learn that other people’s experiences are valid and your experiences are not the only ones that matter in the room,” she said.
A family portrait magnet next to a DIY magnet that reads “Jesus is God’s best gift!” When Jolanda Scott began home-schooling her children, she used it as an opportunity to introduce material that was inclusive and multicultural.
