How can we meet community needs? Thoughts on in-person, hybrid or remote learning during a global pandemic
Right now, families across the country are at various stages of having had to decide or needing to decide soon on what to do about school in the fall.
Some schools are offering choices between some or all of the following: full time in-person learning, hybrid learning (some days at school, some days remote), or full time remote learning, although whether any sort of in-person option will be available come the start of school will vary across the country.
As many of us consider these decisions, I wanted to share a few articles that have been helpful in my thinking.
Even if you are not a parent, it is important to be aware of some of these considerations - not only do you likely have friends, family and colleagues who are grappling with these issues, but these are community and systemic issues that impact us all.
First, I thought this article, Will Parents Send Kids Back To School? Study Reveals Differences Across Race (Romper) was interesting - a recent nationwide study showed that white parents are likely to be the least concerned about sending their kids back to school.
It counters the narrative of “white and privileged parents pulling their kids and hiring private tutors” and also “it’s a privilege to keep kids home” - which is not to negate the truth in both those statements (and many are not pulling their kids but still considering hiring private tutors).
But what if it is also a privilege to feel less worried about sending your kids back to school, and for it literally to be less of a risk also?
I found another article, Some Students Should Go to School, Most Should Stay Home, clarifying. Written by Shayla R. Griffin, PhD, MSW, is "a Black woman, a researcher and educator with a doctoral degree and MSW, and a mother of school-aged children — one who has a disability — trying to balance work with no schooling or childcare relief since March 11, 2020" her proposal can be summed up as follows:
"We should open some buildings for the most marginalized students — those who will not eat without school, those who will not be safe in their homes without school, those who are too young to be left home alone unsupervised but will be left anyway because their parents have no choice but to work in order to feed them, those with disabilities that cannot be supported outside of a school building. And in order to address real economic concerns about things like childcare, these building should be open five days a week for full school days for every student attending. Anyone who does not fall into these categories of need must stay home so that there is some hope of educating those who truly cannot stay home safely."
The same author also wrote a follow-up article, If “Most Students Should Stay Home,” What Do I Do with My Kids? and takes a look at the private tutor phenomenon rapidly talking hold in communities where mostly white and privileged parents are banding together to form "learning pods" in their homes. Although an understandable reaction to the situation we face going forward into the next school year, this will unfortunately exacerbate the already existing inequities embedded in our society.
There are a couple of other article on a similar topic that have stood out to me, The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’ (NYTimes) and For parents who can afford it, a solution for fall: Bring the teachers to them (Washington Post).
"These arrangements will allow children with affluent parents and connections to get ahead even as the system makes it harder for other children, said L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, a sociology of education professor at New York University. He calls it a fresh example of “opportunity hoarding.”
He wishes that parents would also work with their schools to find solutions for all children, by pooling resources, for instance.
“Most parents will act in the interest of their child, and you can’t tell them not to,” he said. “I say, ‘Act in the interest of your child, and add some equity to it.’ ”
Obviously there are widely varying opinions on this, but at the end of the day, my child's elementary school has noted: please know that choosing remote ONLY learning (if that option works for your family) would help us serve our highest need families by decreasing the number of people in the building.
In addition, I believe we need to consider whether the in-person learning experience will be so greatly compromised by following health and safety best practices as to be worth it.
This post describes a therapist’s perspective on the potential for in-person school to further create trauma. Unfortunately, what is best in the classroom for emotional health is often in direct conflict with what is best for reducing the risk of virus spread.
It makes sense to me that if there are fewer kids are in the building, the risks are lowered and it is more possible to create a better experience for those who are there.
And for those who could keep their kids at home but want them to have the social aspect and also need at least some childcare, what if we could come together in our communities to create equitable and inclusive playground meet-ups in various neighborhoods where our families live, possibly as a decentralized outdoors-with-masks-on "after school" type of program that might be a little more safe, convenient and fun than using in-person school to meet social needs (at least while the weather allows - and that would give us more time to figure out an inclement weather solution)?
How do we provide "off-day care" for families who absolutely cannot keep their children at home and whose schools are not offering a full time in person option?
And how can we come together in our communities to provide more support for parents and caregivers - class/cohort WhatsApp chat groups, zoom support groups, regular feedback surveys where the results are shared and responded to, a regular cadence of calls with teachers and school leaders etc.?
What can we create in our communities to meet more of our needs, understanding that those needs may differ widely?
And what about the role of employers in helping to alleviate the burden on their employees? Griffin says in her second article:
"This also means anyone who is an employer has a moral obligation to allow any employees who can work from home to do so, so they can care for their children, just as we would if an employee suddenly had a baby three months early. Moreover, it is everyone’s moral obligation not to unnecessarily expose those who have no choice but to work in person to potential carriers of Covid-19 who could be working from home."
Also note her entreaty:
"If you do nothing else in your efforts to pod more justly, stay enrolled in public school. The biggest social justice risk we face as a result of this pandemic is the destruction of the public education system in the United States. This is the explicit and decades-long goal of Betsy DeVos, the current U.S. Secretary Education. If many of the most privileged parents officially opt out of public schools, they will be laying the foundation of destruction that will last long after this pandemic is over. Public schools in this country rely on enrollment. So, whatever you actually plan to do in your home, make sure your child’s name is on the list of kids opting into the online public school option and make sure they are being counted."
Finally, over and over during the past few months I have gone back to an article I read early on in quarantine on Traditional Indigenous Kinship Practices at Home: Being Child-Centered During the Pandemic which I wrote about in a post Rethinking what we think of as "disruption".
As I say at the end of this post:
What if instead of trying to recreate our colonial, capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist and adult supremacist systems of work and school in our homes, we could do something different?
What if we could finally break out of our current but fast becoming at least temporarily untenable systems based on a "factory" model of capitalism that came out of the industrial revolution that has exacerbated disparities of wealth and power to the point where our systems and cultures across the globe are grinding to a halt?
What if we could shift the ways in which we have been socialized to think and behave, and adjust to having our kids around not as a disruption but as a re-integration?
How else could we re-integrate and heal ourselves, our families, our communities, our world?
What if we could create a society where every person was treated with value and dignity and not as a means for the profit and gain of a few?
What if things never go back to the way they were but could evolve to something better?
This is a crisis. There are no easy answers.
But it is time for those who believe in equity and justice, who have supported or attended recent protests, and who have been part of the "woke wave", and for all those companies who issued statements saying that Black Lives Matter to actually act like they do.
Banner photo by Mwesigwa Joel on Unsplash.