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almost back to normal for Ann Hoeffer and her family in rural Lake County.
“The younger ones are doing great. It’s the older ones,” said Hoeffer, who’s helping raise her six grandchildren. “They’re only going to school two days a week, and it’s not enough.”
The youngest three children Esmerelda, 4, Gabriel, 5, and Jesse, 6 have been going to in-person school five days a week for several months. Gabriel and Jesse, who both have autism, have made significant leaps forward thanks to their teachers and therapists, and the stable routine. Jesse can write his name, Gabriel can get himself dressed, and their social skills have improved.
Even in the most frustrating, hopeless, boring, grief-filled days of the pandemic, California families found slivers of joy.
In Los Banos, the Ruiz and Gutierrez family played indoor badminton and learned American Sign Language together. In the Lucerne Valley, 8-year-old Colton Reichow careened over the desert hills on his dirt bike and learned how to butcher a cow at his grandfather’s farm. In Los Angeles, Shari Abercrombie found a way to make math fun for her son with special needs.
And just about everyone in EdSource’s families project rediscovered the simple comfort of talking to each other. In the third installment of our year-long series “California Families Struggle to Learn,” on how families are coping with distance learning, we asked families for their bright spots: What’s helping them survive this most challenging of school years?