OrganizationMaking the Grade: Setting Up Your Space for Home School
Learning online has become more mainstream in homes across the country — especially after 2020. Whether it's pandemic-induced social distancing or an online college course that you're taking remotely, attending school from the comfort of your own home is now a part of modern life. But as with all new frontiers, it takes some trial and error to make things work. How do you make space for online school where you can focus and work productively? This quick guide will show you how to set up your space for remote learning.
Set up Learning Spaces
Every home has a different layout. While some homes may already have a dedicated office space or a basement that is away from everything, not every home is optimized for online learning. If your home is already equipped with an office, then there isn't much to figure out. You can simply outfit this place with a desk and chair for your online learning sessions.
But how do you achieve peace and quiet if your home is maxed out already? What if your home is cramped, and you can't find anywhere to set up a digital classroom? The key lies in splitting rooms until multiple uses and making a schedule. For instance, a master bedroom does not need to be used throughout the day. You can set up a desk in a quiet corner of this room and use it as a place for your child to concentrate during the school day. If you have multiple children that need to learn, you can set up desks in separate bedrooms. Then, arrange times when these rooms are exclusively used for schooling. Stick to the schedule, and you’ll soon find a rhythm!
Eliminate All Distracting Noises
The digital classroom can be surprisingly noisy. For everyone’s sanity, equip each digital learning area with earbuds so that nobody else in the house has to hear everything that is going on in the classroom. This will help multiple students focus and help parents also get on with their work-from-home day. During classroom sessions, keep the doors closed and encourage minimal interruptions. Schedule snack and lunchtimes so that kids don't wander about and rummage the kitchen for treats at odd times. Also, discourage phone calls and loud music during dedicated school sessions so that everyone can get a fair chance at focusing.
Create a Pleasant Atmosphere
It is difficult to concentrate in a cluttered and disorganized environment. So when you make the classroom a pleasant place to be, there will be more quality learning and enjoyment of school time. Doing small touch-ups in the classroom will make a big difference. For example, installing a storage cubby area to put all your child's digital learning needs close by will help the day run more smoothly. There's nothing more frustrating than having your child wonder where everything is and being interrupted frequently to find them. By having these bins labeled with major categories like writing utensils, whiteboards, dry-erase markers, Etc, you will make your kids more independent.
Don’t Make it Look Like a Classroom
Your home may be a digital learning place for a season — so it’s wise not to make permanent changes to your setup. Instead, make it more like an office where everyone in the family can retreat to focus at different times of the day. For instance, your child may use the office during the day for remote learning but then at night, a parent might use the same desk to work from home. Therefore, it's important to make this place not look iconically like a classroom but more like a clean and organized spot where it can be done by multiple individuals in the household.
Branding a room to have just one function can be a detriment to the rest of the household because it can make it too restrictive. If you really want to make the classroom look more like a classroom, then you can include some visuals like an ABC chart or number chart for younger children that can be set up and taken down promptly when school time is over.
Make Space with Extra Storage
When the world made the sudden shift to online work and learning, many people discovered that their homes were not adequate for the sudden change. The increased demand for space was easy for some families to accommodate while it was challenging for others— especially people living in small apartments. When moving isn’t an option, it’s possible to free your home of clutter so that the home can be more functional for online learning.
Sometimes there's no way of getting around putting things in storage. For instance, you may need to convert your basement gym into a schoolroom for a few months. This means you can put your home workout equipment in storage so that you can gain a classroom. Or, you might want to convert that old recreation room into a classroom and take that old pool table and bar space in a storage facility. This allows you to make temporary changes without losing the furniture you want to reclaim when learning returns to in-person instruction.
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