LANSING, MI - Governor Whitmer closed schools across the state of Michigan due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This means that students have had to find alternative ways to educate themselves outside of the classroom.

Adam Hussain, an 8th grade Social Studies teacher at Waverly Middle School, had this to say, “We found out about this on Thursday, March 12 at 11pm, with many teachers waking to this news Friday morning. When we arrived at school we had less than 50% of attendance in our classrooms. As of now we cannot assign or grade students and cannot include remote learning."

Enrichment opportunities are being offered and Hussain says, “What that looks like for Social Studies 8th grade at Waverly Middle School is we’ve put together a resource page. We're updating it everyday and there are links, reading suggestions, YouTube channels to allow kids to continue educating themselves. We have had everything planned, not only for the next three weeks, but the next several months, and hope the children take the opportunity to combat learning loss and get ahead, because when we come back after spring break, and assume we're coming back, we have to move at an elevated pace to get the students where they need to be by the end of the school year. I hope families are taking the opportunity to work out relationships and spend time with one another.”

HOMTV was also able to speak briefly with Adam’s wife, Angela Hussain, who teaches 3rd Grade at Bennett Woods Elementary in Okemos and she added that, “We’ve been told for equity reasons that not to send out additional work that we wouldn’t normally do outside our classrooms, and want to be equitable around the district to make sure that everyone is getting the same information. We send out email links such as freckle.com, which has math, social studies, science, and language arts and it’s adaptive and for all our resources that we use in the classroom."

As a teacher and parent, Hussain suggests that puzzling, reading, learning, and even coloring together, just relaxing activities to do together. "I’ve had parents that are doing theme days like St. Patrick's Day where they learned the history of that holdiay. Another parent had a nature day where they walked around the trails in the neighborhood and learned about animals because it is still good to get outside and do those things too. We're really pushing for families to read with their kids and do the creative fun activities.”

To watch the full interview with Adam Hussain, follow the link below.