To understand the family situation of little Natálie is not an easy task at all. She lives in a house with her grandma, older brother, her mother, and other relatives. It is her grandmother who Naty calls „Mum“ as it is she who is her guardian and care-taker. The girl was taken from her mother due to restriction on legal capacity. The mother is not able to take care of herself, let alone of her daughter.
Nor are the other inhabitants of the house able to help Naty with her 4th grade schoolwork. Grandma is illiterate, her father effectively non-existent, her older brother attends a special school. Of the rest of the family, no-one has ever attended an elementary school. The only person who had been helping Naty with school preparation was her grandpa, who unfortunately died year and half ago.
First from the family to attend an elementary school
The girl is the first person from the family who attends an elementary school. She really likes going there. Learning is fun for her. She is smart and skillful. Unfortunately, since the start of the state of emergency, home preparation and homework have become a problem. The tutor was not able to visit the family. And the teacher’s effort to contact the girl was limited to a mere note indicating that the study materials were available at the school‘s website and that it is not in the teacher capacity to dedicate special care each and every student. But the family had neither internet connection nor a computer. Moreover, no-one in the family had any experience with computers. We considered briefly lending a computer to the family, but given that nobody knew how to use it, the 9-year-old would be left on her own.
Tutoring via phone worked well in the first months of the quarantine. But with the new curriculum it was more and more difficult to explain the homework to Naty – she had great difficulties to understand the tasks. The only alternative would have been to move the tutoring outside while using protective equipment. Currently, the whole family is in quarantine because of suspected COVID-19 infection. As soon as the situation gets calmer, Naty will have a partner again with whom she could do homework provided by the teacher in the form of printed exercises and delivered to her by a volunteer assistant. Without her tutor, this talented girl would be left without regular preparation and consequently, her personal potential would cease to be developed properly.
