How Covid Affected Student Learning – Part 2

The Community and Schools Shut Down

Businesses were shutting down and asking employees to work from home. My husband was one of the last employees to work at his computer company. It made absolutely no sense to me why he was being required to go to work when the barista, serving coffee in the company lobby, was staying home. Finally, my husband received a phone call from his boss to work from home. I guess that Wednesday was the last normal day I can remember during the Covid pandemic. The next day, my husband worked from home and I worked at the school.

Then came Friday, March 13th. The day started out normal. One student complained about another as we entered the classroom after the morning bell rang. All of a sudden, the power flickered. My heart skipped a beat as the power generator kicked on and power was restored. Five minutes later, the school phone system went down, the power went out, and the internet was down. I think my heart stopped beating at that moment. My thoughts were that we are being invaded. What am I going to do? Will I have to evacuate and take my students up to a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill to stay safe? I could not imagine how I could evacuate and keep 24 fearful seven-year-olds calm while hiking up a hill? Most pictures in my head looked like hysteria.

I took a breath, got out my phone, and called my husband for many reasons. We live around the corner. I needed to know how widespread this was. I was in full panic mode. I thought that was pretty clever for the terrorists to shut down the internet. Cutting off communication made this a whole different ball game. Feelings of isolation started to settle in and my own fear was getting the best of me. I needed to hear his voice. My first question was is the power out at home? He said no. A wave of relief spread across my entire body. I think I felt all my muscles relax. Then I asked is the internet out at home. Another no! Thank goodness. Okay, now I can begin to think again. The question now was what the heck is going on? The level of anxiety was hitting like a roller coaster in the classroom. (Many of you who are teachers right now are thinking what in the heck were the students doing while she was on the phone. All this took place during my lunch break.) With the time remaining, I headed up to the front office for a bio break. I arrived in the staff room simultaneously with the principal. She was sitting down and looked as though she was in shock. She delivered the news to those of us on the second lunch period that she has to shut the school down. She couldn’t believe her own words.

How Do I Say Goodbye to My Students?

What I hate most about what happened next was that my gut instinct was right. I was only told to pack the students up because we are closing the school down. The virus was spreading and we could no longer keep students and staff safe. The immediate thoughts around campus were that we would be back in three weeks. Maybe it was my degree in Biological Sciences that guided me that day, or my work in biotech for five years. But my instincts that day led me to pack the students up with their workbooks for the rest of the year. It’s never a good feeling being right about difficult things and this was one of them. I taught the rest of the day as normal as possible. When the final bell rang, I walked the students to their parents and returned to my classroom. Friday, March 13th 2020 marks the last day that my second graders would see a classroom for 18 months.

Flake by flake, traumas continued to fall upon us. Power outages, failed internet connectivity, massive California forest fires, not to mention teaching seven-year-olds how to video conference. We needed time to heal. We needed the snow to melt.

Welcome New School Year

The 2020-2021 school year could be a novel on its own. The distance learning curve was brutal and the expectations were incredibly unrealistic. All that aside, where are we now? I was crushed by my own personal obligation to close the student’s learning gap and the trauma caused by online learning.

This coming school year my expectations have to shift. The students in front of me are not the students I have known during my teaching career. They need social emotional lessons grounded in team building and resiliency. STEM projects, music, art, and literacy intervention will be focus of what these children need to heal the trauma from the last two years of learning.

How Covid Affected Student Learning – Part 1

The Week of March 4th, 2019

The country had been going crazy with the politics of President Trump. Protesters were wreaking havoc in cities. Random fires were being set. A real threat to our safety was felt throughout the neighborhood, school, and home.

My first experience/awareness of the panic with COVID-19 was a routine Thursday evening trip to Costco. The parking lot was full like it was a day in December getting close to the holiday season. We could barely find a place to park. The store was packed and buzzing with people. This is super unusual for Thursdays. The main reason I shopped on that day of the week was because it was not packed. On this particular Thursday you could find some people masked while shopping.

The next unusual thing I noticed at Costco was the empty refrigeration meat containers. Not a single piece of chicken was in the store. This was so hard to believe. I bumped into a former coworker. After exchanging pleasantries, I asked her if she felt something strange going on or was it just me. That is when she said that she thought people were reacting to the threat of the Covid virus spreading. Her feelings were confirmed when I rounded over to the toilet paper area and discovered the entire floor to ceiling stocking area was completely depleted of any kind of bathroom tissue.

Small Changes at School

Leading up to the next week at school, students were discussing Leprechaun traps. We were also beginning our unit on double digit subtraction with regrouping. (As any second-grade teacher will tell you, subtraction with regrouping is a challenging hurdle for seven-year-olds.) Although the students were ready to take on the many ways they could decompose numbers, it was a transition period. Mild anxiety was already lurking in the perimeter of the classroom. It just hadn’t taken a front row seat yet.

As I mentioned earlier, our anxiety wasn’t unwarranted. The Covid pandemic and school closures matched all the terror, fear, and anxiety our school community had experienced the previous summer when the foothills next to the school were set on fire by an arsonist. The amount of political unrest at that time, coupled with this act of terror, really caused our community to panic. It was hard to separate truth from fiction. Was this an activist? Were activists setting random fires to split the city’s resources so they could then pillage through local residential homes? For the first time in my life, I felt a serious personal threat to myself and my family. Although the fire was put out and an arrest was made, the fear of the upcoming Covid school closure added to the anxiety that had previously unfolded in the lives of these seven-year-olds. It felt as though each new event fell like a snowflake to an ever-increasing imminent avalanche of tragedies.

The Week of March 13th, 2019

Anxiety took center seat on Friday, March 13th. That week, students started seeing a heightened level of cleaning taking place. Each day, school desks would get wiped down. Door knobs were disinfected. Procedures for coughing and sneezing socially were being reviewed in the classroom. There was a definite undercurrent flowing on campus of unspoken fear and concern. And that’s when I heard the words that will stamp my timeline forever. “Mrs. Gentry, is it here yet?” My mind was split with trying to decipher the question. Is it here yet? Is what here, I’m thinking of what could this little one student possibly be talking about. Such a vague question. And that’s when I took the leap and asked, are you talking about the virus? To which more than one student replied, “Yes!” And that’s when I knew we had a problem and it was time to address it.

How Do You Describe Covid to a Child?

I sat my students down and explained that it’s not quite like a green cloud of evil crawling over the hills or like a blanket of thick fog in the early mornings of February. We talked about colds and how this virus was similar and different. I reminded them that they already knew what to do and we would just have to practice it more often. I doubt my little conversation helped calm the fears they were seeing develop over time, both at home and within their classroom.

By midweek disinfecting after class became routine. The struggle to understand why children seemed to be safe but not the elderly was becoming an uncomfortable familiar conflict in my head. It led to a lot of questions about the students being the carriers and should the adults start protecting themselves.

Note: How Covid Affected Student Learning – Part 2 will be published on August 9, 2022.

Preparing Our Elementary Kids Return to School

It has been a year since many children in California and nationally have returned to a traditionally classroom since the COVID 19 pandemic. Many smaller elementary schools and school districts have successfully reopened their schools to students while enforcing clearly defined health and safety procedures.

Safe COVID Practices

Summarized below are best practices these schools use to ensure that their students are safe at school:

The school continues to share with families what the staff has done to ensure safe learning for students. Classroom teachers and the school’s administrative staff provide regular updates.
Students sit in socially distanced desks in classrooms.
They wear masks at school.
Students bring their own food and socially distance from others when eating lunch and snacks.
They bring their own hand sanitizer or soap for regular handwashing.
Many schools test students every two weeks to ensure they do not have COVID 19.
Most students continue attending school online two to three times a week as part of a hybrid learning model to limit the number of students at a school site each day.

How Are Kids Feel About Their Schools

As students return to school, they are:

Excited to visit with their teacher and classmates in person
Excel at school because they are so happy to be back in the classroom with other students and their teacher
Can receive added support more readily due to the many resources available to students at the school
Express more confidence about their computer literacy skills after logging into the online classroom daily, completing homework online, and learning to make a slide and take pictures of their work that they have emailed to their teacher
Appreciate the ability to work independently on the computer and in small classroom projects because of the training they received as distance learners
Are proud of the resiliency skills they have gained while sheltering at home and through distance learning
Are able to demonstrate various strategies they have learned online on how to reduce stress and anxiety while completing new computer applications.

Home Sheltering Successes

May your children celebrate the many computer literacy skills and self-resiliency skills they have acquired while sheltering in place for nearly a full school year.

Joyce

Student Grading Considerations with COVID-19 School Modifications

COVID-19 pandemic surges continue to keep schools closed or programs modified. How will K-12 teachers support students, when they have limited time to work with them in class or through distance learning programs? What standardized testing programs have been altered or eliminated this year and how will it impact many college acceptances?

Winter Conference Tips

Here are some tips to discuss with teachers at your upcoming winter conferences:

Clarify with the teacher or principal how teachers will grade students during the pandemic if the school is providing distance learning, hybrid learning, or modified on-site learning to ensure an accurate evaluation.
Have your children organize and collect their class work to ensure it is documented and reviewed by a teacher if there is a disagreement about a specific class grade.
Confirm with teachers or the school’s principal specific assignments that must be returned to school on specified dates if there are regular collections of work from home.
Have your children confirm how they can submit online assignments by email or through an online portfolio. Each teacher and school may have different requirements that may include how:
- your child can resolve any grading discrepancies
- the school or teacher will accommodate for documented learning disabilities.
- the school will test for specific learning challenges
- your child can receive tutorial support
Ask the teacher or the principal what standardized testing will occur during this school year and how you can help your children prepare for any testing.
- If your child must take online tests for entry into competitive high schools or colleges, ask how will the tests be administered.
- Learn if there are any accommodations for documented learning disabilities.
Ask the school’s principal how your children can secure college counseling support services due to limited pandemic student services activities.
- Verify how your children can apply for financial aid packages.
- Confirm how your children can participate in competitive high school or college visits.
- Check how the school is providing leadership programs, study skill preparation, and standardized testing preparation during the pandemic.
Contact each competitive high school or college your children are applying to for any modified requirements due to the pandemic.
- Ask about adjustments are being made for students who are not participating in state and national standardized testing.
- Determine how the schools are accommodating for documented special education needs.
- Identify how your children can document traditional school leadership activities on school entrance applications when schools’ leadership and sports programs have been suspended or limited.
Help you children relax and support them with lots of encouragement during this very challenging time as there are so many unanswered questions as schools struggle to equitably work with all students.

May your winter conferences ensure your children’s academic successes!

Mary Ann with Yvette

Starting Middle School During COVID-19

While my older daughter is finishing up middle school, my younger one is just starting 6^th grade this fall! Even though she has heard all about the middle school experience from my older daughter, my younger still faces her own set of concerns, especially in the context of COVID-19. Here are some of the paradigm shifts we have discussed with her to prepare her for middle school.

Learning Environment

While the transition from elementary school to middle school is already a big one, a transition during the uncertainties of COVID-19 is especially difficult. Since spring, we have had to learn how to manage distance learning which included

scheduling class Zoom meetings and Google Meets
balancing screen time for academic and social activities
navigating online textbooks and resources for learning
having limited access to the teacher (Daily video lessons, an optional 30 min Zoom Q&A session, and a weekly class check-in are just not the same as connecting and learning in-person.)

Returning to school will look very different from what we have ever seen and experienced, but some things still remain true whether in a distance learning or hybrid style school program. My daughter will have to learn how to

actively participate and speak up especially because it is a virtual classroom
take initiative to ask teachers questions when she does not understand because it may be easier to “fall through the cracks”
be resourceful to learn a different school’s or teachers’ online learning management system
find alternate or multiple sources to help her understand content if her teachers aren’t available

Social Environment

In the elementary school setting, students are housed in one classroom and they can also play with friends in the playground. Now, having to move to a virtual or hybrid middle school experience, my daughter will have to learn how to connect and make friends with others in a virtual way. To overcome the socially awkward middle school years, and now to have to overcome the social distance hurdle are no easy tasks! These are the topics of discussions we’ve had, and no doubt, will continue to have as we support her adjustment to the “new normal” of doing school in the COVID era.

Don’t be shy. Take initiative in the virtual class to say “hi” and introduce yourself.
Ask people about themselves and their interests.
Ask if anyone would like to do a virtual lunch together.
Offer to hop on a Google Meet and do homework or class assignments together.

Wishing you the best as school opens up this fall,

Jaime