Midterm

Elementary, middle, and high school education have all been complicated due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Schools are not able to function as they did before. Despite the fact many have reopened and have stayed in session since reopening, what school is has changed. The challenges that have been created by the pandemic have made it impossible to operate schools in the same fashion. With many kids doing completely online schooling, in person classes having to shrink their class sizes, allowing minimal social contact between the students, along with temperature checks and hand sanitizing, teachers and students both are being forced to adjust to these new ways. It was a struggle in this country deciding whether or not to even open the schools up at all. Of course, no one was or is arguing against how important it is for children to be in school. The problem is how safe it is for them to be there.

The reading “The Public Purpose of Schooling in the Age of Coronavirus” by Doug Larkin explains precisely the reasons on why schools are so important. Some of his reasoning includes intellectual development, child welfare, training for the future along with moral and ethical training, the economy, sustaining culture, and social transformation. All of which are incredibly vital to society as a whole and especially to the growth of our children. Larkin states at the end of his piece how due to the pandemic “schools will not seem like they are still schools, but they will be the schools we need and are willing as a public to support, just like they always have been.” This is an important point because it is reminding people that just because schools have to look different now, doesn’t mean we should no longer support them, especially when they are in a time of need.

The issue of whether or not to reopen schools for this school year was a decision that had people divided. On one side were the people who were against the reopening of the schools that explained how it could lead to the spreading of the virus from students and faculty back home to each of their families. People on the other side argued that students would be fine and the virus would not harm them since they are not in the high-risk group and the importance of school outweighs the risk of transmitting the virus. Despite what side you were on, this fact remains the same: schooling during a pandemic has produced a type of schooling that is not exactly beneficial to all.

I spoke to Ashley, a first grade teacher of ENL (English as a New Language) who has been teaching for nine years via email and video chat. When I asked her how her school has been doing since reopening, she told me how “there is a lot of uncertainty in routine procedures and policies, which is affecting almost everything else.” She explained to me how having to implement the many different Covid-19 preventative procedures has caused an issue for the school in multiple different ways. Ashley states how they have had to “take staff away from normal preparation time in the morning to conduct temperature checks, we are spending school money on thermometers and other PPE, which takes away from buying new books and supplies.” This directly affects how the children are learning in school and how teachers are teaching at the same time. Schools have already suffered from a lack of funding and now some of that funding has to be used on coronavirus related materials instead of materials to help students learn. Ashley also talked about her school, like most schools, now lacks a social aspect for the students, explaining to me that “students are now confined mostly to their classrooms. They eat in their rooms, as the cafeteria is too much risk.” This prompted me to ask her what she thinks is her students biggest struggle and she tells me how it is definitely the loss of the social aspect of school. She tells me how “students miss playing with their friends and eating with other classes at lunch.”

When it comes to teachers though, they are struggling in a different way. For her, scheduling for her ENL classes is the biggest challenge. Due to budgetary restrictions and students being split up between in person and virtual instruction, it has caused issues for ENL teachers to plan their schedules out. Ashley also tells me that a lot of teachers feel helpless and “as a teacher, your goal is to do what’s best for kids always, but with these new policies and restrictions, this doesn’t always seem possible and there isn’t much a teacher can do about it.” She also told me something interesting after I asked about any stressed behaviors she or other teachers have exhibited while teaching during the pandemic, sharing “teachers in the buildings right now are either working nearly around the clock or have resorted to doing the bare minimum.” So, it is a toss up, some teachers are working before and after school plus the weekends while others are doing what they can to just get by. She does specify though that the teachers going “above and beyond” can eventually “result in a burn out and fast.” When it comes to what has helped her teach during the pandemic, she says her school administration has provided them with many different virtual resources. In her class she uses Google Classroom along with Chrome Extensions and other virtual platforms to help the kids. She explains this as a way to “cater to virtual students and help boost in-person students’ computer skills in case of another closure.”

For a parent and student I spoke to Laurie and her son Richard via phone call. A high school senior this year, Richard and his mom are experiencing some other challenges. For Laurie, she feels like the school “is barely functioning, doing the best it can given the circumstances.” When it comes to how included or excluded she feels in how school is going she tells me “the only way you feel included is when the school contacts who, giving you summary phone calls of what is going on.” Besides that, she is pretty much excluded. For stresses and stressed behaviors, she explains to me how the pandemic hit at such a bad time, specifically during her son’s final year in high school, and that has lead her to “stress over how unmotivated and uninterested my son is when it comes to this pandemic style of schooling. I have panicked over whether or not he will finish this year and graduate.” Richard himself expressed a concern about this, explaining to me that “knowing I probably won’t have a normal graduation ceremony, I won’t be able to hang out with my friends in school for the rest of the school year, it has caused me to become unmotivated to finish.” Senior students across the country can definitely relate to this. This 2021 class watched the class of 2020 miss out on their final months of high school, miss out on their homecoming and their prom, and miss out on that final graduation ceremony everyone counts down the days to.

For what is helping Richard and his mom get through this pandemic school year is that fact he was provided the option to do in person class or go completely online. Laurie tells me that him deciding to do online has helped her “not have to worry about him being exposed to the virus at school and bringing it back home to the rest of our family.” Richard tells me under the circumstances he prefers the online school so he doesn’t have to ride the bus and sit in school with a mask on all day. He does tell me though “online school doesn’t feel the same. I am not as focused on the material since I am home with different distractions.” Laurie does what she can to help her son do the best he can with the online schooling but there is only so much she can do. She has tried to make a routine for him and make sure no one bothers him when he is doing school work but ultimately it is up to him to finish out this school year.

This pandemic has negatively impacted a school system that has already been struggling to stay on its feet and negatively impacted the students who are trying to get an education. We have learned that across the country students do not receive an equal education. There are inequalities that already existed before the pandemic and are even more prominent now. Students who attend schools that already had budget restrictions are even more strict now, limiting the resources and supplies they can provide. Students whose families couldn’t afford a personal computer for their kids or household Wi-Fi are joined by the families who can no longer afford it now due to the pandemic. We are seven months into a pandemic still struggling, and that struggling will most likely continue due to the lack of financial help from our government for families and for school districts. The pandemic is also not gonna just go away and we are not “turning the corner” like our president claims. There will be no vaccine in the coming weeks either. Our government needs to help these families and help these schools that they basically forced to open by threatening to take away all their funding if they didn’t. The future of our children hangs in the balance.