A Bristol Consolidated School student is using a mix of homeschooling, tutoring and videoconferencing to keep up with his studies while he recovers from foot surgery.
Brett McLain, 13, and a seventh grader at Bristol Consolidated School (BCS) broke his foot last year. The break didn’t heal properly, and on Oct. 13, two days after the young athlete played in his team’s last soccer game, he underwent a complex procedure to repair the foot.
The surgery requires McLain to stay off the foot for eight weeks. School, with the potential for roughhousing, is too risky, the doctor said.
For the first four weeks, McLain’s mother, Kimberly McLain, taught every subject. Mother and son, however, found homeschooling less than ideal.
“We’d argue all day,” Brett said. His history class is learning about The War of 1812. Unfortunately, for Brett and his mother, “The War of 1812 became The War of 2011,” Brett said.
BCS brought in the McLain’s neighbor, former educator Wendy Pendleton, to tutor Brett. “She makes him toe the line,” Kimberly McLain said. Brett’s regular teachers, including Becky Cooper and Donovan York, visit regularly.
Brett also interacts on a near-daily basis with Cooper and his language arts classmates via Skype, a popular video chat application.
Brett excels at math (“my favorite, by far”) but language arts is a bigger challenge, and the extra interaction with Cooper and his classmates helps.
Brett let The Lincoln County News sit in on a Nov. 15 Skype session.
Shortly after 10 a.m., Brett opens his school-issued MacBook and, a few minutes later, the machine chimes – it’s Miss Cooper, as Brett calls her, calling.
Brett answers and Cooper appears on his screen, as does Brett in a smaller window at the bottom of the screen. Cooper quickly reviews the day’s tasks with him before he becomes, essentially, just another member of the class.
The class is working on a unique project this week, combining American government with ancient Greek mythology. The students each represent a different character from Greek mythology – Brett is Hades, the god of the underworld – and must write a presidential campaign speech incorporating the characteristics and “voice” of their figure.
The students make their speeches one by one and, as they walk to the front of the class, Brett’s friends greet him with smiles and waves.
After each speech, Cooper chooses one student at random to offer feedback. Tommy, one of Brett’s classmates, makes a humorous speech as Ares, god of war, touting his ability to – what else – wage war. Cooper draws Brett’s name to weigh in, and Brett advises him to tone down the bloodthirstiness.
The exercise lasts about a half-hour before Cooper signs off. She turns the camera to the class, who waves and says ‘goodbye.’ “They miss you,” Cooper said.
“I miss you too,” Brett said, promising to attend a basketball game the next day.
The method isn’t perfect, as occasional technological difficulties (no audio, distorted audio and video, a loud, persistent whistling) sometimes make it difficult for Brett to hear and engage. Clearly, however, it offers him a break from isolation and a tool to help him stay on track academically.
The first trimester ends after Thanksgiving and, if not for everything the McLains and the school have done – the homeschooling, the tutoring, Skype – Brett might have a report card full of incompletes. Instead, he participates in every class except music and he hopes when he returns to school around mid-December, not to miss a beat.
