Oxnard teacher balancing work from home with multiple kids of her own

OXNARD, Calif. -- While some Ventura County school districts are allowing teachers to bring their kids to school while they teach, others are not. That means many teachers are left instructing students, while balancing monitoring their own children's school work all at once.

Lindsay Pompey is a 7th and 8th grade teacher at Fremont Junior High School in Oxnard. She also has three boys who are all in elementary school. Her sons are also at home doing distant learning.

“It is much harder than I originally thought,” said Pompey. “At first I thought I can sleep in a little bit longer, and my commute is just up the stairs, but I think I underestimated how much of a strain it was going to be.”

Pompey has three boys grades, 5th, 3rd, and 1st grade. All classes, including Pompey’s, begin at 9 a.m. While Mrs. Pompey teaches her junior high school classes from the hallway, her kids are all together in another room doing their virtual learning.

As teachers are forced to teach from home, those educators who have children are forced to multitask

“Whenever I have a second from teaching, I check in on them to make sure they are doing what they need to be doing,” said Pompey. “So I definitely go back and forth many times a day.”

And it doesn’t always go so smoothly.

“During first period last week there was a couple of meltdowns,” said Pompey. “The door behind me slammed, over doughnuts. You know... priorities. And we just have to laugh about it. I ask my students, ‘Who has a younger sibling screaming in the background?’ Half of them raised their hands. I think it helps us connect on a human level in a lot of ways.”

NewsChannel reporter Senerey De Los Santos will give us an inside look at what a household looks like for a teacher who is instructing at home while managing children of their own.