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Chalkbeat
A day without school: What life looks like across America when children stay home
By Chalkbeat Staff
March 17, 2020
It was a Tuesday like no other.
Crosswalks were empty. Children’s backpacks and lunch boxes sat unused.
Yellow buses weren’t rumbling down many streets, and school doors
didn’t swing open at dismissal.
Schools were closed from New York to San Jose and so many points in
between, causing an unprecedented disruption to American life with no
end in sight.
Over the past week, officials nationwide made the agonizing decision to
close schools in response to the worsening coronavirus. Some governors
made sweeping statewide decrees. Elsewhere, decisions rested with
mayors, superintendents, and charter leaders.
Several concerns were obvious and immediate — how to educate millions
of children, how to feed those who rely on schools for meals, how to
provide child care for those parents who can’t work remotely.
But the absence of schools means something more to parents, students,
educators, and countless others. It has upended the very rhythms of
their daily lives in ways that we are only now starting to understand.
Chalkbeat reporters from across the country spent Tuesday interviewing
Americans grappling with the sudden, indefinite change to their school
communities. Many are at best uneasy, at worst frightened. Some,
though, have found reasons for hope.
Will Ehrenfeld, teacher at Pathways in Technology Early College High School…
History teacher Will Ehrenfeld began his morning like most others: With
peanut butter toast, an apple, and a cup of coffee. But when he arrived
at Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn around
8 a.m., his routine was anything but normal.
While New York City students remained home for the second day of a
closure expected to last at least until April 20, teachers had to
report to their schools Tuesday, the first of a three-day training on
how to transition their courses online. Remote learning across New York
City district schools is set to begin Monday.
Ehrenfeld and his colleagues huddled in the school library to hash out
details on the massive shift, discussing whether to offer virtual
office hours via text message, and debating how demanding to be of
their students. They did this all while trying to maintain a few feet
of physical distance from each other, a situation that has made
Ehrenfeld and other educators across the city uncomfortable.
“We’ve been discussing as a staff what the expectations should be,”
said Ehrenfeld, whose school serves nearly 600 students, two-thirds of
whom come from low-income families. “A lot of people in our community
have varying levels of internet access and parent supervision.”
Before the coronavirus dominated headlines, Ehrenfeld was preparing to
teach students about the Dust Bowl and how environmental factors helped
cause the Great Depression. He now feels the unit has an eerie
contemporary resonance, and plans to ask his students to explore that.
“I’m asking them to do more writing about current events because we’re in a historic time,” he said.
Ehrenfeld expects to let students complete assignments at their own
pace and to rely on videoconferencing as little as possible, as some
students will be using cell-phone data plans to do their work.
And while Ehrenfeld is hopeful that students will engage with the
material, he’s also trying to calibrate his own expectations, given the
ongoing public health crisis.
“Students’ lives are being affected really dramatically,” he said, “and
I’m trying to be sensitive that some students are going to really
struggle to learn on their own.”
Renita Parks, teacher at Memphis STEM Academy…
Renita Parks was thankful to be spending the day relaxed at home rather
than in her classroom at a charter school in the Frayser neighborhood
of Memphis.
Parks, 36, is expecting her first child in June. This has heightened her anxiety over the spreading threat of the coronavirus.
“I don’t want my baby or myself in unnecessary risk,” she said.
But the pregnancy has also multiplied her empathy for her second grade
students at Memphis STEM Academy, most of whom do not have access to
the internet or a computer at home.
“The digital divide here is huge,” she said. “I know. I’m
African-American, from urban Memphis – the people in my community, I
just don’t know how this will affect them in the long term if we’re
relying on remote access for weeks and weeks.”
Parks found out her school was taking an extended break around
lunchtime on Thursday – the last day of classes. She didn’t have time
to print off much for her students to take home, but since then she’s
been able to communicate with some parents through a texting app and
send them resources to use at home.
Though she tried to relax and enjoy her day, Parks spent much of it
checking social media and news outlets for updates on the coronavirus
out of what she called a “weird anxiety.”
“I’m actually not a fearful type or anything but it is definitely
scary,” Parks said. “I’m about to bring my first child into the world.
And for the first time that I can remember in my generation … it feels
like this is the onset of something happening that we’re not in control
of.”
Douglas Freeman, parent at Newark Vocational High School…
In the Freeman household, class began at 8 a.m. sharp.
Douglas Freeman and his son Jaylin, a freshman at Newark Vocational
High School, got seated in Freeman’s home office and logged onto Google
Classroom. When Jaylin started algebra at 8:30, working through
problems and watching videos his teacher posted about adding and
subtracting monomials, Freeman followed along — or tried to.
“It was a rude awakening,” the father said. “Like, I got to do algebra again?”
Freeman is president of Weequahic Park Sports Authority, a nonprofit
that organizes youth and community programs in the South Ward park.
Because the city closed the schools and the county closed the parks,
father and son are home together, converting Freeman’s office into a
two-person classroom.
Along the way, they’ve had plenty of help from Newark Vocational’s
staff, Freeman said. On Monday, Principal Kyle Brown hosted a
conference call with families where faculty members explained how
students would use Google Classroom during the shutdown along with
district-made work packets. When Freeman and his son ran into technical
difficulties, they called the school’s parent liaison for support. And
when a teacher noticed the Freemans weren’t logged into the program, he
called to check in.
“It’s like I’m a co-assistant and I have the teacher and my son and we’re all learning together,” Freeman said.
Meanwhile, other South Ward residents have been trading advice in a
Facebook group that Freeman helps moderate. Parents have told one
another where to pick up the homework packets and shared their
makeshift homeschooling schedules. Teachers have volunteered to help
with the assignments and to track down Google Classroom login codes.
Freeman even posted a video of himself trying to make sense of his
son’s algebra assignment.
“We have a crisis right now,” Freeman said, “but out of the crisis something positive is coming through.”
The sudden experiment in homeschooling has also allowed for some
father-son bonding, Freeman said. They slogged through math together
and discussed careers in the culinary arts, one of the school’s
vocational programs. Jaylin said he’s actually enjoyed the time with
his dad.
“I’m surprised it’s going well,” he said. “It’s actually more fun than school.”
Sam Fairley, student at Detroit Edison Public School Academy…
Sam Fairley was out of bed at 9 a.m., three-and-a-half hours later than normal. Not that it mattered.
In just a few dizzying days, “normal” for the 17-year-old high school
senior has been upended by the mad scramble to contain the new
coronavirus.
Choir practice: canceled. Classes: canceled, with a still-uncertain
plan to move to online instruction next week. His shifts at a sandwich
joint, which he was using to save up for a prom outfit, are drying up.
Prom itself: who knows?
His school, Detroit Edison Public School Academy, moved its spring
break to this week, hoping to buy time for teachers to create a plan
for online learning.
That left Fairley, who is used to a jam-packed schedule, desperate to
kill time. He spent the morning picking up cleaning supplies (the store
was busier than usual, but stocked up), and stopping by the bank to
make sure that his savings had survived the stock market plunge (they
had).
By noon, his friends were up and his phone was buzzing. They have
settled on group FaceTime calls as the best available replacement for
crowded high school hallways. Discussion centered on the
so-far-unfounded rumor that Detroit would follow San Francisco and
require residents to stay home, a dismaying prospect.
“Everybody is over it right now,” Fairley said. “Now that we’re forced to be home, we’re bored out of our minds.”
He’ll have plenty of time this week to ponder a future beyond COVID-19.
He’s been accepted into two collegiate music programs, and he’s still
deciding which one will best launch him into a career as a music
teacher or an opera star.
“I want to be optimistic that things are going to be well,” he said. “And that I’ll still be able to pursue my dreams.”
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