Episode Details

Checking in Krishon and Danielle Allen:

Danielle Allen says this is “the longest year of our entire lives.”

When the pandemic hit she became the pseudo-teacher, scheduling “classes” between her work conference call. Krishon became the principal. 

Krishon noted it they were trying to condense an 8 hour day school day in to two hours. He said to his kids, “You can prolong it with whining or you can get it done.”

Krishon said in March he had to learn Zoom with this kids. The struggle was how to still be productive in his job, because nothing is stopping even in the pandemic, while also assuring the kids don’t fall behind in school. Even with all the pressure at the end of the school year, the grade came out as pass or fail and they laughed it off, they could have just done “mid-level work.”

Danielle is an operations management for a tech company and Krishon does I.T. Management for the dept of the navy. They have 11 and 8 year old daughters. Danielle remarked it was a weird time to transition into Middle School.

Her oldest quickly got in the flow to online learning; her teachers posted all the assignments for the whole week and she was able to work at her own pace. The youngest saw her sister working and tried to do work ahead of time so she could have a long weekend. 

It was a “get through to the end of the school year and get to summer.” There was also a shift or discovery about productivity when the girls would come to “school” in their pajamas vs. when they got up and got dressed.  Danielle C. identified it as a mindset shift, and they were able to implement it in the entire household.

The way we learn subjects is totally different than the way their kids are now. Krishon said “ It was survival mode for all of us. Don’t tell me what your teachers said about how to do this math.” They had to google common core just to understand what the kids needed to learn. They had to fill the learning gap. And in the end taught their kids two ways to do math! 

Krishon said for this fall they are still feeling like it’s going back to March since we don’t know how long this virtual school is going to last and they still have to work full time jobs. The dynamic of the aspect continues to force them to prepare for the unknown. 

Danielle feels that having a set schedule is helpful for creating subject in the household, especially as she is going into work a couple of days a week. 

She goes back to work “carefully.” Thankfully her office has few people and the space allows for good distancing as well as she maintains good health habits. They have a “decontamination” process for when they return home. She doesn’t want to put her family at risk and she does what she needs to do in order to keep her family safe. 

Danielle says this has unfortunately made people not want to socialize. Everyone is more mindful. There’s stress for getting used to the process and talking through masks. But it’s what needs to be done for all people to be safe. 

Krishon says mask wearing has become polarized and political, everything is heightened where they are in Maryland, being so close to Washington DC.

Danielle C. says that Mexico and Morocco isn’t having the same tension with mask wearing.

Krishon looked back to see how long things have taken before to make changes including smoking indoors, seat belt wearing… There’s fight and registration before change will happen; both sides argue their case and compromise is finally reached. It’s always for the safety of the majority of the population. 

Danielle says we need to be thinking for the greater good, for the collective, not just for individual rights and how it’s affecting me. 

Krishon spent a bit of time in Japan and at first he was taken aback by mask wearing, asking, “do I need to wear a mask?” But they he learned that when someone is feeling under the weather there, they wear a mask as a way to protect