 Crossroads in learning. I am your host, Keisha King. Today, just like everyone else in the country, we're going to talk about COVID-19. However, I want you to know that this show is dedicated to our Keiki, our children, their mental health and well-being, their social and emotional abilities and feelings in general, and then, of course, their education. I want to let you know that we're going to put a positive spin on this. This is a difficult time in our nation and in the world, and we've heard all sorts of numbers, those who have been affected by this disease, those who are passing away from it. We don't often hear about the fact that we have about 23,000 people who have contracted the disease and recovered, so I want to point that out, as well as we have lots of Keiki all over the world and especially in our states who are affected by this and they will never face a sick day in their lives pertaining to COVID-19, that is. They are affected, however, because they are home from school at this time, at least until April 30th. So, today, we have three guests with us who are going to come on board and talk to us about how our children are affected by this and how we can help them through this. As you can see, I'm in my home studio. I'm not at the studio because, like everyone else, I'm practicing social distancing. So, if there is a delay in time or if you hear outside noise because I live in the city, just go along with it and be understanding. So, welcome with me to Crossroads and Learning, Cynthia Levy, a special educator from the Department of Hawaii Department, Tanya Smith Johnson, homeschool mom of six, and a business owner right here in Honolulu, Hawaii. She owns Milk and Honey Studio and Dr. Mitz P. Sass, who is the program director for the Mental Health America of Hawaii. Ladies, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having me. It is totally my pleasure. As I said early on, we're going to talk about COVID-19. So, we're going to talk about the educational, social, emotional, and mental health issues that pertain to this. And we're just going to jump right in. I'm going to jump in and first start talking with Tanya. Tanya is the mother of six beautiful children and she is a homeschooling parent. She has resources available at her fingertips because she's been doing this for quite some time. Tanya, tell us how many years have you been a homeschooling mom? I've been homeschooling for almost 15 years now. My oldest is a senior this year and we started when she was a four-year-old kindergartener. So, we've been at it for a while now. Okay. So, 14, almost 15 years. That's a lot of experience. How do you feel about all of the students, public school, private school, charter school, all now being forced to learn at home virtually with their parents and teachers together? How do you feel about that? You know, part of me is excited, right? Because it's an opportunity for parents to really connect with their kids, get to know them, get to know where they're at, and like take an active role in their education, their enrichment, and their schooling. For me as a homeschool parent, when I started, there weren't others, you know, who were doing it. So, I had to figure it out on my own. So, it's, you know, it's a promising time. You know, like you said, we can focus on the positive. It's an opportunity for us to thrive, to push through, and actually use the time that we have at home with our kids. So, you know, to explore, to learn, and just, you know, do the best that we can in these trying times. But we can thrive through it. That's right. And thank you for that. You know, I could imagine 14, almost 15 years ago, there weren't very many people doing it. How did you make this decision, or what were the reasons for making the decision for you to teach at home? With the onset of this pandemic, I had to sit back and think about what was it that, you know, gave me the push. Just like a lot of parents now, this is the push that they, you know, they have, you know, not by choice, but they have to make, you know, a choice in regards to their children's education and have to homeschool them. But for me at the time, it was a similar situation. I wasn't necessarily thinking about homeschool. At the time I was in medical school, I had a daughter who was getting ready in her kindergarten, and I thought kindergarten was like, it was when I started colors and alphabet and fun. But a little bit, I know, there was the onset of no child left behind and things have changed. And even kindergarten became really academic. It was the time when, you know, kids were getting a lot less time outside, and arts and, you know, just enrichment activities. So my daughter struggled. She really did. I didn't think there was anything, you know, necessarily, you know, hard or wrong about like her starting as a four-year-old instead of a five. I started at four years old, but she struggled with just how intense it was, the lack of time to really communicate and play with other peers to kind of move around. And so it was a point where I literally saw the light in her eyes kind of dim, and she would come home. There were kindergartners at rolling backpacks because they had books. And I was just shocked at homework in kindergarten. And I, you know, after seeing her and she would go ahead. You can see, I'm starting to interrupt you. There's a lag in our time, but you can see we're all shaking our head because we can relate to that. We've seen children carrying those book bags on rollers because they actually do have books. And it's a big deal when you're in kindergarten, you think that things are going to be really 14 or 15 years ago. Cynthia, I know that you've been an educator for some time. I know that this is probably the most drastic change in the field of education. Tanya just mentioned no child left behind and that was a big enough change. But now how are you coping with going from being a classroom teacher to bringing the classroom into your own home? It is a great, is a big challenge, but it's a challenge that's doable. As a teacher, you have to be flexible. You have to, for me, it's always focusing on my students, making sure that my students are okay. Connecting with my parents was a big thing too. It was really good for me to connect with my parents because once I made that connection with my parents, I knew what was going on with my students because my students could not speak to me via the internet. And I had a conversation, a message from one of my parents that she was having a difficult time with my student having not to understand what was going on. And that makes it even more challenging for me because my heart is always involved with my students. I'm very connected emotionally as well as education-wise because to me it's all about having that relationship. And when you have developed a relationship with your students, it really takes a lot out of you to go through this situation, but it's a positive situation. It's a situation that's tough, but you can always see the positive in it. I agree with you on that. And Dr. Gass, I just want to bring you in and just kind of mention the fact that something that Cynthia just said, she's very connected to her students as most educators are. And now we have gone nearly two weeks without children being in school. And I wonder how people are coping and what ideas you have from, especially the mental health America of Hawaii, what are you all doing or can you all suggest to help the anxiety that teachers, parents, and our children might be facing at this time? Absolutely. So I think that some of the things we have to remember is this is a new situation. It's an abnormal situation. And we're all having very normal responses to it. So those responses could be confusion, fear, anxiety, and with cakey with providers and teachers. And so just making sure that we're supporting everyone, we want everyone to know that there are a lot of different organizations that are still up and open. We are one of them. So you can call us at any time. We have our helpline available for anyone needs help. And we started a new, we started a new Facebook group. So if you go to mental health America of Hawaii, and you go down to our groups, we have now busy bees, cakey activities, because we know that kids are still at home, they're trying to learn, we have parents who are also working from home. And so we want to give them different activities, different ways to kind of have a childhood that I think for myself growing up on a farm in the Deep South, I had for myself. And it's a really, it's a good opportunity to kind of bring the kids back into playing board games and spending quality time with their families and going outside into the yards and learning more about nature. And so we're really trying to do that with some of our activities and some of the things that we're doing, while still providing support for parents. And so we have that as well on our regular Facebook page in our live now Instagram of self care, self care for the parents, because the children, if they don't know what's happening, they absolutely know that something's happening, that's happening with the parents. And we just, we want to be age appropriate as well as to how we're talking to them about what's happening. So you can do things like have them paint a rainbow and put it in the window to remind them that the storm will end, and that things will get better, you can have them make get well cards for the different islands and also post those up or put them in a special mailbox. There's just different activities that you can do to help support the kids and also staying positive through this whole time. Yeah, you know, I have to go back to what you said when you were talking about being in the South and doing things outside. I think all of us can relate to a childhood that included digging in the dirt or running around in the backyard, climbing trees or playing with worms. I didn't play with worms, no. But it was done. And just being involved and connected and being connected to nature. I think that is helpful. I think people, parents as well as children, you get something when you are creating something new and different. I know my mother, but many others who dig in the soil to plant flowers and just being connected to the earth or as we say here in Hawaii to the Aina, that gives you something that's positive. And so we want our Kiki to do that. I want to ask, I want to show the picture, the resources that Tanya has in her household. First of all, I want to say I'm so impressed by her library. It's color almost tearful. There's a lot of books, but I imagine this was accumulated over a lot of time. Now this particular picture here, this is not her home, but if it were, oh my goodness, this is her child. And we have pictures of her children outside in nature, just looking as happy as can be. And this is four of the six, right Tanya? Yes. Okay. Wonderful. Now your children, they play instruments. They're into what other activities can you tell us about that they're involved in that maybe some of our parents can gain inspiration from? Well, they, like you said, they do music. I teach them foreign languages at home. They do violin and piano. And a lot of those classes have transferred to being virtual as well. So we're still able to continue. And we do martial arts taekwondo outside of the home. So there's many, but even without doing those extra, you know, enrichment classes, there's so much you can do with so little, like you don't have to have like this expansive library like I do. And you really can just like take, you know, just real simple things to make lessons like we were talking about the south and getting in the dirt, you know, just imagine having a lesson on soil or the water cycle and doing experiments, you know, just, you know, steam having just a lot of water and talking about water cycle in that way. There's so many things that we can do. And you don't need to have spend a lot of money or have a lot of resources, you know, on hand to do so. You just have to be creative and think about the ways that you can teach them and they learn. You're exactly right. Cynthia, can you talk to us a little bit about what the Hawaii Department of Education has provided in the form of resources for parents and for teachers virtually? It provided a lot of websites where the students can engage in. iReady is one of the big curriculum based website that we've been using. So the kids are already familiar with it. So they know how to log on, how to go to the different, where they can go to either reading or math. So the students are able to continue with their learning that way. And also, I have reading A to Z that I had already introduced my students to this year. And they love the fact that they can have the books read to them if they cannot read because I teach special education and some of my students difficulty reading. So they can listen to the stories and then answer questions. And they can also, they give them points and stars and they can work up to getting rewards for for passing the test, taking the test, having the I tell them the risk, take the risk to take the test because some of them have anxiety about taking tests. But we have different websites that our school has given the parents. When I did my packet for my parents, I made a list of websites of resources that they may use that were free. Because a lot of websites now are offering free websites where they would charge you for that there was a cost. So students are more websites available, resources available for them bother at home. Exactly. And I love that. You know, I've read where Amazon has that are available online, audible.com has free books that are available online. There are museums. You can go to the MMA in New York as well as so many others that are free right now. You can take a virtual tour of some of the best museums across the world and across the country for absolutely free. So teachers can find out about those resources simply by doing a Google search. And then the Department of Education has a plethora of resources available on their website. I think it's important that we note that all of these resources are available at your fingertips if you have internet access. However, unfortunately, not everybody has internet access. And in fact, if I look blurry to our viewers right now, it's because everyone in my condo condo building and everyone across the street and pretty much everyone on the island who had has access is using Wi-Fi right now all at the same time. And you guys look clear, but I look fuzzy. But you know, everyone is doing the same thing. And and I've heard some say we're all in this together. So for those parents who don't have access to the internet, we do have teachers, I know Cynthia has already mentioned this, that are creating packets and their worksheets and still activities. Then this is not your standard worksheet. Am I right? I mean, these are things that are hands on. You can use a water bottle and learn about the water cycle. You can do so many different types of things like that. So it's really about togetherness and engagement and giving more time for yourself. Can you talk to us a little bit more, Dr. Gas, about self care? That's a topic that's dear and near to my heart. Can you talk to us about what parents can do and what they need and what our cake you need and can do? Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's important for us to kind of realize that during this time that it's support. Everything is about support. And though we're physically isolating, we shouldn't be socially disconnecting. Those are two very different things. And so making sure that we're reaching out to our loved ones, to our friends, finding unique and different ways to do that. Recently, my friends introduced me to Marco Polo, which is kind of like a live video chat that works like a walkie talkie as well. So we leave each other video messages. I think it's just a good time to try to find different ways, creative ways to stay connected, because social connectedness is our number one way to do self care. But it's important to also schedule yourself different things to do during the day. Stick to a schedule, stick to your sleep routine, and make sure that you are taking the time for yourself. And with cake, it's really important because you can teach them the coping skills that you want them to carry into adulthood while they're young. So some of the things that we always say is work on diaphragmatic breathing, deep breathing. Well, if you have cakey, you can have them blow bubbles. And so you just have them breathe in really deep and blow out a really big bubble. And it's the beginning steps of teaching them just how to deep breathe. So there's a lot of really great ways to teach coping skills to our cakey that we also use as adults. Exactly right. Now, I used to teach that type of class. And in my classroom, yeah, I had to have, you know, and so what we did, I was a Zumba instructor first. And so Zumba is like the antithesis of yoga, right? So in yoga, you're learning about stretching and movements and being connected with your body and breath. You become fully aware of your breath. And Zumba, you're running out of breath. That's a different story. But when you're connected with your breath, it's as simple as taking a deep breath in and we can practice this now, ladies. Let's show them how it's done. Take a deep breath in. Hold it for four seconds. Four, three, two, blow it out. And something as simple as that can calm you in that moment. And it might not take you, if you've escalated to a 100th level of just being totally out of sorts, it might not take you from a 100 down to a zero. But if you do it over and over, you will learn better coping mechanisms. You will learn how to study your breath so that you can think or peacefully and be a little bit more calm about the situation that you're in. So breathing and becoming aware of your breath, becoming aware of your surroundings. And then for parents, I know, you know, I can't tell you how many means or stories that I saw where parents were saying, oh, goodness, teachers deserve a million dollars a year or other things. I love seeing that. It's nice for people to see the other perspective. But I think also, once the dust settles, that parents will remember what it's like to be at home and to raise your children on your own. And I don't know about you ladies, but I don't see anything wrong with that. Absolutely. You know, so we are remembering that not everybody has access to internet, not everybody has a perfect home life. Not every parent is fully capable of working with their child in the way that a professionally trained educator can or in the way that a homeschooling parent has been doing this for over 14 years. They might not be able to do it in a way that the professionals can. They might not have the coping skills that the clinical psychologists have or others who are in the medical health or mental health field can. But what parents can do is show love. They can show patience, right? If there are any parting words, because unfortunately we're running out of time, that any of you would like to say to encourage our parents or to talk about events that you know of that are coming up that can be and encourage the parents. Please let me know. Say them now. I'll give you each 30 seconds or less. We'll start with Kanga, then Cynthia and then Dr. Gass. My parting words would be just breathe. It's okay. You're not expected to duplicate school in your home. You're not expected to do this perfectly. It's just one day at a time and spend each day just in the moment and connecting with your children, however that is. If you need more, I have a 10-part series on the Guide to Homeschool on my site milkandhoney.studio and it'll be a perfect resource to get you started and get you through for now. So go check it out if you need it. And again, that is milkandhoney.studio and it's A and D honey.studio. Please check that out for that 10-part series. I can't imagine that they can find a better resource to use than someone who's been homeschooling for over 14 years, unless they're with Cynthia, who's been a teacher for an awful long time. So Cynthia, tell us your parting words. My parting words would be we're in this together. Make memories with your child. Make that connection a greater connection because sometimes working parents are busy and have things to do. So for me, making memories because I'm making memories with my girls. I have four daughters. They're adults that one is a teenager and we're making new memories with each other. We're having fun and relax. Yeah, that's the key and that's a perfect segue into Dr. G. She just said relax, Dr. G. Any parting words on how to do that? Yes, so if you need any extra recommendations on how to do that, we have live in the Nat Island Instagram. But I think if I were going to give parting words, it would be words of hope just to be kind to yourself, be kind to your family and just reach out. Stay connected to one another. It's going to help get us through this and there is there's a lot at the end of the tunnel. There's a rainbow at the end of the storm. If we stand strong, we will get there. And if you need anything, any support with your mental health, please please call us at 808-521-1846. We are available Monday through Friday, 8 to 430. Perfect. So everyone had something encouraging to say because even though this is a tough challenge for everyone across the world, there's still encouragement. I think I loved hearing the idea of making memories because every other generation has that moment in time where they can say, I remember when this happened, right? You can remember if you were there, you can remember the Great Depression, you can remember where you were when JFK passed away or was assassinated or when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. For me, I wasn't alive during those times. So when I was, Marvin Gaye was shot by his father. I know that's that's not relevant to the times, but you know, we all have something in our lives that we can point back to that was life altering. And this could be that time. It is the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. In 10 years from now, we'll go back and we'll reflect on these memories. My hope for our viewers and our Kiki especially is that you'll reflect on things that happened this time during this time because you will create them, create memories, create a last, a long lasting memory of happy times with your children. I know there's financial stress. I know there's health stress, but in spite of it all, there is always hope. Take care of yourselves and each other. Aloha.