Before the pandemic, Karen Mozian had a concrete vision of her son’s K-12 education: He would go to public school, just as she had. But then school

The pandemic pushed more families to home-school. Many are sticking with it

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2022-01-22 03:30:04

Before the pandemic, Karen Mozian had a concrete vision of her son’s K-12 education: He would go to public school, just as she had.

But then schools shut down in March 2020, and Mozian saw 9-year-old Elijah glued to Zoom at the kitchen table, struggling to get his words out. Elijah stutters, and distance learning made it worse. He was barely engaging, daydreaming through his classes.

Elijah was diagnosed with ADHD in the summer of 2021, just before sixth grade. He was back on campus, and his school granted him accommodations, such as additional testing times and help with incomplete assignments, but Mozian noticed that he was expected to advocate for himself — and he didn’t want to be singled out. His grades dropped abruptly.

That, combined with what she saw as a stressful environment of COVID-19 restrictions, made Mozian realize that school wasn’t working for her son. It was painful to see him struggle. So she pulled him out and started teaching him herself.

“To say I’m home-schooling my kid are words I never ever thought would cross my lips,” said Mozian, a wellness business owner and daughter of a public school teacher. “But I realized that there are other ways to learn, that I put a lot of faith in the public school system.”