As school districts shutter one-by-one, we’re all wondering how our children are going to learn. We’re wondering how long it will be before schools open again, life returns to routine, and our children are back in their desks with their teachers and their books and their friends.

We’re wondering what this online thing will look like for them and for our families, how we’ll teach them long division and figure out how to submit homework electronically and keep our jobs at the same time. We’re curious about what our days will look like. We’re worried about gaps in learning, getting behind, and how we’ll all get re-combobulated when the time comes to return to school.

I believe that the best things in life are accessible to everyone, at least most of them, and that learning is one of those things. Learning can take place anywhere. We’ve always learned everywhere, in fact. We’ve learned at school most classically, yes, but we’ve also learned at home and when we travel, in groups and all by ourselves, from teachers and from each other. We learn when we sit in a classroom, but we also learn when we read and write and listen out in the world or when we ride our bikes around the block and build Lego creations on the living room floor. We learn when we get into fights, when we fail, when we fall, and then learn even more when we forgive, try again, and get up.

The lessons I know the deepest, I’ve learned the hard way. I think we all know this. We learn best when we are challenged.

So I’m absolutely not afraid that our kiddos aren’t going to learn right now. We are in a challenging time, completely unique in the world. Our children will remember this time their whole lives, this weird lapse of weeks and months from school when a strange virus shut down the world like never before. It will be just like how we, their parents, remember 9/11 vividly, as well as the hours and weeks that followed that day.

Our children are watching and observing this time; it’s what they do. They will learn from us now, at home. Will we teach them panic or patience? Fear or peace? Scarcity or generosity? To be hoarders or helpers?

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to teach our children in these coming days and weeks, so it’s important to ask ourselves, “What will they learn?”