What Remote Work Taught Me About My Daughter’s Virtual Classroom and Teamwork
On a Tuesday morning in late January, I found myself in the kitchen with two laptops open and a mug of coffee that had gone cold. My daughter, Maya, was in fourth grade, and her class was doing a group science project over video call. I had a team meeting for my own remote job at the same time. We had both decided the kitchen table was the best spot—she needed the whiteboard, I needed the good light. For ten minutes, we were two people trying to have two different conversations about two different things, and neither of us could hear the other.
I remember muting my microphone and watching her wave her hands at the screen, trying to explain something about volcanoes to a pixelated classmate. The other girl’s face was frozen mid-blink. Maya sighed, unmuted, and said, “Hello? Can you see my model?” There was a long silence. Then the other girl’s voice crackled through: “Sorry, you cut out. Go again.”
In that moment, I thought about how often my own team has those same conversations. How many times have I said, “Sorry, I missed that,” or, “Can you repeat the part about the budget?” We’ve become experts at the phrases of remote communication, but we’re still not always good at actually communicating.
My office moved to a fully remote setup about two years ago. At first, I loved it. No commute, more time with Maya, lunch in my own kitchen. But after a while, I started to notice something odd. We were getting the work done—the spreadsheets, the emails, the client calls—but the feeling of being a team had shifted. It wasn’t that we didn’t talk. We talked constantly, in scheduled video calls and Slack threads. But those talks had a different shape. They were planned, organized, and efficient. The spontaneous conversations that used to happen by the coffee machine or in the hallway before a meeting—those were gone.
It turns out those seamless chats weren’t just social filler. They were where a lot of real collaboration happened. Someone would mention an idea, a colleague would add a thought, and before you knew it, a small problem had been solved without anyone writing down a single action item. In remote work, those moments are almost impossible to recreate. You can schedule a “virtual coffee,” but that’s a bit like scheduling a hug—it’s nice, but it’s not the same.
I started watching Maya’s group project with this in mind. Her team of four had been assigned to build a model of a volcano and present it. In a normal year, they would have sat together at a table in the classroom, passed around markers and cardboard, argued about whether to use baking soda or vinegar, and figured it out through trial and error. Instead, they were on a video call, each in their own home, holding up their own individual cardboard cutouts.
What I noticed was that they were actually being more productive in one sense. They had divided the work early: one kid brought the baking supplies, another did the research, Maya made the label. They met twice, each meeting had an agenda, and they finished in half the time. But the collaboration wasn’t really collaboration. It was more like parallel play. Each child did their own piece, and then they tried to fit the pieces together at the end. It worked, but it was quieter. There was no arguing, which I thought was good at first. Then I realized that arguing—the productive, messy kind—is how kids learn to defend their ideas and listen to other people’s.
Maya’s volcano presentation ended up being fine. She knew her facts, the model was sturdy, and she spoke clearly into the camera. But when the call ended, she closed her laptop and said, “We didn’t even see each other’s parts until today.” She didn’t sound upset, just matter-of-fact. That was the way things are now.
That conversation stuck with me. I started paying closer attention to my own work days. Are we actually less productive? The answer is complicated. For tasks that require focus and individual effort, I get more done now than I ever did in an office. No one interrupts me. I can write, review, and respond without the constant background hum of a shared space. But for tasks that require genuine collaboration—brainstorming a new campaign, troubleshooting a tricky client problem, or just getting a sense of whether a strategy feels right—something is missing.
It’s not that we can’t do it. We can. We use shared documents, we take turns talking, we make charts on virtual whiteboards. It’s just that the process is slower and more deliberate. In person, collaboration has an organic, almost physical quality. You read body language, you interrupt each other, you laugh at something random. On a video call, everyone is trying to be polite and take turns. Everyone is trying to be clear. And clarity is good, but it isn’t the same as creativity. It’s the difference between playing a sport and watching a replay of it.
For kids, the stakes feel a little higher. School is not just about learning facts. It’s about learning how to be with other people. When Maya worked on that volcano project, she missed out on the part where she and her classmate squabble over who gets to pour in the vinegar, and then figure out how to compromise. She didn’t get to feel that jolt of excitement when the eruption actually works and everyone cheers. She just got the finished product.
But I’m also careful not to romanticize the classroom. I remember my own school days, and there was plenty of frustration and wasted time in group work, too. The difference is that in person, the frustration happens in real time, and kids have to manage it face to face. That’s a skill. On a screen, it’s easier to tune out, to mute your microphone, to wait quietly until someone else solves the problem. That might be better for productivity in the short term, but I worry about what it does to their ability to navigate social complexity.
What helps, I’ve found, is being intentional about creating the things that happen naturally in person. My team now has a short “check-in” at the start of every meeting, where we just talk about how we’re doing for two minutes. It feels awkward sometimes, but it works. We also use shared notes for every brainstorming session, so people can type ideas as they come, even if they’re not talking. That lets the quieter members contribute without having to jump into a conversation.
For Maya, her teacher has started doing something similar. She assigns roles to each child in a group project—researcher, designer, presenter, coordinator. That way, each kid has a clear job, but they still have to check in with each other to make sure everything fits together. Maya is the designer, and she made a shared folder where everyone can put their work. It’s not perfect, and they still have moments where they talk over each other or wait awkwardly for someone to speak. But it’s a start.
I’ve also had to adjust my own expectations as a parent. When Maya is on a video call for school, I used to think that she should be focused the whole time, just like I feel I should be focused in a work meeting. But now I understand that long stretches of screen time are exhausting in a different way than regular interaction. It takes more energy to stay engaged when you’re just a face on a screen. So I encourage her to take a break between online sessions, to run around the house or just stare out the window. She doesn’t need to be “productive” every single minute.
Looking back at that chaotic Tuesday morning, I see now that we were both doing the same thing. We were trying to connect with other people through a screen, and we were both finding it harder than it looks. My team is still productive—we meet our deadlines and our projects get done. But I’ve learned to accept that collaboration in a remote world is a different creature. It’s quieter, more structured, and sometimes less messy. That messiness, though, was where some of the best ideas came from.
I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to the office full-time, or if Maya’s school will go back to normal group projects. But I’m learning to be less worried about the answer. We’re all figuring out how to work and learn together in a way that keeps the parts that matter most—trust, patience, and the willingness to ask, “Can you say that again?” It’s not the same, but maybe it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be enough.
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