NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Her computer is her classroom and with it, Brooke Le Clear is able to teach children on the other side of the world. 

Le Clear works for several websites, teaching English to students in China. At first she taught classes before dawn, when her students were just getting their evening started, but since the coronavirus outbreak, she’s teaching more and more at night – during what would normally be their school hours.

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"Is your school closed?" she asks a student in China. "Our school is closed, too, and we are sad, too.”  

In a way, Le Clear was able to see what was coming long before it got here, and that gave her family time to prepare.

“My husband and I were like, 'Oh we’re going to turn into China,'" she remembered. "We just started shopping and getting whatever we needed right away.”

Of course, with schools closed, this online teacher is suddenly a homeschool teacher as well. For Le Clear, writing out a schedule is key.

“If I don’t have it written out it becomes too freeform and then we’re just like, 'what do we do now?'” she said.

It doesn’t matter if they get to all of it. The point is it provides structure and separates the day into less daunting chunks of time.

“So you know, it’s not like, OK, sit down at our desk and do work for four hours because it just doesn’t work," she explained. "They don’t do that at school either.”

She also uses lots of online resources: GoNoodle to get the kids moving, Kahn Academy for instruction, and Google Arts and Culture to expand their horizons without leaving their property.

“Like a ton of museums that you can tour," she said. "You just scroll through and it shows you a painting and it gives you a little information about it.”

But is there's a silver lining from this experience, she says, it's the way her family has incorporated mindfulness into their every day routine.

“Just five minutes of meditation, sitting together and just meditating," she said. "That has been really lovely.”

If China has shown her anything it’s that this could be a long road. Her advice for parents trying to navigate it? 

“Be flexible and be gentle with yourself," she suggested. "And if they end up spending three hours watching movies than that's what they did that day and that’s OK, too.”

There will be plenty of opportunities for kids -- and adults – to learn valuable lessons before this is done.