Shortly before 8 a.m. Jen and Basil Tsimpris’ third grader sits at his desk and watches his classmates’ faces pop up on his screen.
A jumble of more than twenty bright “Hellos!” clatter over each other for seconds before the teacher shuts it down.
As hundreds of thousands of students in Virginia start virtual school this week, this is the new normal. Basil Tsimpris says the kids are already adjusting.
“Before kids would pass notes to each other, now the teacher has had to turn off the chat function,” he laughs. That’s just one example of what parents and teachers are being reminded of: kids are resilient.
In nearby Chesterfield County there were some connectivity glitches on the first day that were resolved within a couple hours. And in Charlottesville a brief internet outage impacted some students. But things have gone smoothly so far for this Henrico County family. Jen Tsimpris credits the school and teacher with being organized and communicative.
“The teacher had a virtual open house where the whole class could log in and meet her,” says Tsimpris. The teacher also met one on one with their child.
Jen Tsimpris also gives her own son credit -- for knowing how the technology works. “He already knew chromebooks, he already knew his password...it’s not like all the sudden they dropped this alien life form on to his lap. He knew what to do,” she says.
And while he had the normal back-to-school jitters, Basil Tsimpris says the specific concerns were different this year.
“He was more nervous about adult-oriented concerns. Like, would our internet work?”
With Basil Tsimpris also working from home now the family did opt to upgrade their home internet. But that’s far from the biggest adjustment they’ve had to make to accommodate the “new normal.”
With limited childcare options, Jen Tsimpris has quit her job to help with virtual school and to home-school their four-year-old.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
