Online learners and new friendships

[georgiegirl]

Have anyone’s kids made new friends through online learning?

I’m very impressed with how many new friends DS1 has made in 4 weeks. He started middle school, and three other elementary schools feed into his middle school. Only 20% of the kids are online (the rest are in person), and the kids are grouped into cohorts, so he has the same 25-30 kids in almost all of his classes. Only about 4 were from his elementary school. Suddenly DS has so many new friends. The kids have two breaks during the day, and DS spends that time chatting with them online, playing chess with them, and forging new friendships. It’s the sweetest thing ever.

FWIW, DD (9th) hasn’t made any new friends, but she already has a solid friend group and her 3 BFFs do online school together (rotate houses). And DS2 (1st) hasn’t made new friends, but he’s not very social, so I’m not surprised.


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[Snow mom]

DD is in sixth and they’ve only been doing school for a week but yes, it seems there is an online social culture going with online school. She’s been chatting with her classmates and seems genuinely excited to have “met” some new kids in class. The first week did have a lot of getting to know you type padlets and I think it allowed her to see the kids that are like her as well start out by really learning about the other kids as individuals. A lot of these are new kids for her because she went to a new multi-elementary combining school last year but with the way they break up kids there were lots she wouldn’t have encountered, plus they basically missed half the year.

DS is in second and I don’t think he has the skill set to “make friends” in online class. The relationships are just so different at that age which makes being friends with kids he doesn’t know via zoom unlikely. Plus everything is more teacher led and centered so the kids are mainly interacting with the teacher, not each other. There’s very little time that the teacher isn’t actively leading—mainly right before zoom she will start letting the kids in and she just has a screen that shows the agenda and a countdown time of when the meeting will begin. I have a feeling she is hanging out watching the kids interact but they are slowly starting to see they have the ability to fill that few minutes and she doesn’t turn on her video and greet them until the meeting officially starts.