Work, school from home means ‘taking it one day at a time'

Coping with COVID-19

ANNE BERLEANT

BLUE HILL—It’s the new normal. Wake up, eat breakfast, then sit at the table—or on the couch or bed or wherever!—and get to work.

Now entering the fourth week of schools and most businesses closed, families across the peninsula are figuring ways to manage working and learning from home.

“We’re taking it one day at a time,” Blue Hill mother of two Shawna Ambrose said recently.

With daughters in sixth and 11th grades, a more-than-full-time position as town administrator and a husband who works out of state, Ambrose is working, planning and helping someone seemingly every waking minute.

“It’s not easy,” she said. “It wasn’t easy to begin with, because my husband is away all the time. But adding homeschooling is definitely a challenge.”

Her daughters, Maddie, who attends Blue Hill Consolidated School, and Ava, enrolled at Deer Isle-Stonington High School, are finding homeschooling challenging, too.