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  2020-05-15

  Please focus a little bit.

  My fourteen year old brother struggles so much with staying focused on work. When we went to online learning, he started falling behind immediately. To help him focus on work, I would sit in his room and go through each piece of work with him so he would stay engaged. He got completely caught up and stayed on top of work until the end of the school year. I lost hours and hours of time. Up to six hours a day that I would spend sitting next to him trying to get him to finish a math sheet, not text his friends back, and encourage him to add another sentence. this was on top of my own schoolwork each day. It felt like a waste of my time, to sit there staring at a wall while he worked through each piece of homework. I was grateful to spend time with him that I normally would have been at school for, but I still felt like it was hours of time I was using for nothing. He would ignore me, fight me, lock me out of his room and refuse to work. He would also make me laugh until I could not breathe, show me a new way of approaching a problem or question, and smile at me when he was proud of himself. Now, he calls me two to three times a day. He tells me about school, his friends, things that are bothering him, and tells me about what he is learning about and reading. He does all of his schoolwork in my room at home and frequently calls me from my own desk to update me on something small. My dorm would be a lot more lonely without the consistent ring of his Facetime calls. Quarantine and virtual learning is now something I am extremely grateful for. My brother and I are closer than ever and I contribute that entirely to online learning and the time I was able to spend with him that normally would have been spent in my high school building. None of those hours were wasted sitting next to him while he worked, they are all showing their worth as he calls me to tell me about his day, something he used to be very closed-mouth on but now initiates. I am grateful for that time I was able to spend with him, and am grateful for safer at home, with the acknowledgment that I wish that time had come from a less deadly cause, but since it did happen and I could not control it, I look back gratefully on that time. The attached photo is from photography outings we started taking during online learning. He would use my Nikon and frame photos while telling me about why he thought it would make a cool photo. We would be out there for hours watching geese, turtles, birds, muskrats, and frogs sharing each other’s silent company. They are some of my favorite memories with him, and one of the highlights of my 2020