With school closures across the nation, suddenly, we’re not only the loving adults in the lives of our children—but we’re also expected to be their teachers. We know that homework packets and online lessons can’t take the place of school. We all want our kids to learn, and now more than ever, that falls to us parents. That is a lot of pressure! We’re not prepared. We don’t have the time. We have multiple kids with very different needs. We were never any good at math! We need God’s help to make sure our kids keep learning and growing.

Devotional

Praying for Students

While it can’t meet all of the educational needs of our children, technology is a crucial learning resource during this time when schools are closed, but not all students have the technology they need. Currently, one-quarter of households do not have access to the internet, and millions of students lack the devices to connect to it, whether they have access or not. This puts many students of color, who may be in inequitable schools and behind already, in danger of falling further behind. Pray for expanded internet access and availability of computers during this crisis so that all kids have this lifeline to school and learning.

What Can We Do to Help?

7 million school-age children live in American households without regular internet access. Millions of children now find their education on hold. COVID-19 has only widened the digital divide that has long left millions of students behind. Our current crisis and the resulting shift to remote learning increases the urgency of our advocacy. 

We face an immediate need to provide students with broadband internet access so they can continue their education. Investments in high-speed internet access will help bridge the homework gap, both now and into the future.

Tell your elected leaders in Congress to close the digital divide by allocating between $2-4B in its COVID-19 response. This funding would buy and dispense wifi hotspots, modems, routers, and devices to students who lack the tools for online learning.

Additional Resources

• Ed Navigator’s One Great Thing Today: Simple things that families can watch/learn/do each day.  
• Scholastic’s Learn at Home for Grades 1-9: A daily list of lesson plans shared a week at a time. Activities are broken into different grade ranges.
• Great Schools Grade Based Toolkits: Sign up for a daily email based on children’s ages.  Features many worksheets that could be printed out also, for families with the resources to do so. 
• Amazing Educational Resources: Exhaustive list of free resources for parents who want to see as many options as possible.

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