Parents: think back to your own school days.

Can you recall things you were asked or expected to learn but you couldn’t understand why? Perhaps you didn’t think they were important?

Can you remember things you learned or tried to learn because you thought they were important, but to this day you don’t really understand them or are able to explain them?

Were you ever asked to learn things for which you saw no purpose?

Did you ever ask the question, “Why do we have to learn this?”

The answer, in many cases, is “yes” to all of these.

Confession: I was that weird kid in high school that actually liked Spanish class. Prior to my sophomore year in high school, I'd never had any experience with a foreign language. I was quickly enthralled. The verb conjugation charts, the strange new phonetics of familiar letters, the shared vocabulary spoken in different ways, the completely novel vocabulary that just had to be memorized--it all made my brain so happy in a way I'd never experienced before. And I began to realize that there was so much about my first language I didn't know, like what in the world an adverb is and how English pronunciation rules make no sense.

Parents, teachers, and students have had to make significant adjustments to a new normal in recent weeks. We are all feeling these adjustments in various ways: limited our out-of-home movement, restricted in-person social interaction, and endless cancelled activities and plans. And perhaps one of the biggest shifts is working and studying at home.