At home vs. online: one family helps their kids thrive through different learning methods
Aug 10, 2022, 7:13 AM | Updated: Aug 11, 2022, 9:55 am
DAVIS COUNTY, Utah — Every student learns differently.
A Davis County family has found that true, too, as this school year, they are taking the best from the last couple years and applying it to their students’ schooling.
Frank Disque, dad of students going into 9th and 11th grade, said he’s been paying attention to his kids’ needs.
“It’s about observing and watching, right, where they thrive and where they don’t thrive, and where they excel most,” Disque said.
For the Disque family, one student will start the school year from home while the other will attend school in person.
Aidan Disque will attend 11th grade at Davis High School and Bryce Disque will start 9th grade at Online Connect.
Over the last couple of years through the pandemic, both Aidan and Bryce have been like a lot of other students, doing a mix of in person learning and working from home.
For the Disque family, one student (9th grader) will start the school year from home – going all virtual. 💻
The other student, (11th grader), will start the school year in person at Davis High. 📒
Dad says it’s finding what’s best for the individual student. @KSL5TV
— Karah Brackin (@KB_ON_TV) August 10, 2022
Frank said Bryce, their youngest, has some medical issues that at times, makes it trickier to consistently be in school in person.
This August will mark Bryce’s first year starting school full time remote, something they as a family think will take some pressure off.
“For Bryce, it’s the ability to school from a anxiety standpoint. When you miss school because of his physical stuff going on, he would get anxiety about the stuff he’s missing and getting behind. The struggle there, versus now, you can do it when you need to do it and do it at your own pace. You can see the relaxation there,” Frank said.
For Aidan, whose going into his junior year at Davis High, in person learning makes the most sense – both personally and academically.
“For Aidan specifically, his grades were suffering when we went remote. Socially and mentally, you could see was a rough road for him there, and we went back to school and the social interaction saw the change. Then, his grades just went to straight A’s, so they came straight back up to straight A’s,” Frank said.
“I have ADHD, so I kind of struggled to sit still at the computer, and when I get put into an environment where I’m meant to learn it helps me a lot more to understand what I’m doing,” Aidan said.
Frank said the silver lining of the pandemic was helping their family learn what was best for their students.
In this case, he said they likely would never have gone down the online road for Bryce, but with the pandemic, and seeing how much Bryce thrived in that learning space, gave them an option they likely wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
