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Virtual Class Tough on Kids, Teachers

By Rachel Todd

Spectrum staff

A music teacher went viral after posting a video of herself describing virtual learning:

Hey, so, some of you guys might know, I’m a music teacher. And I’ve found that one of the best ways that I can process the whole transition to online learning is to write a song … So ,I wrote a song.

She grabbed a ukulele, pulls it into the computer screen. She began strumming something light, up tempo. Then, she proceeded to scream to the top of her lungs.

Your Morning news hosts hunched over their desks, in Toronto, covering their faces and laughing until they cried.

But it really was no laughing matter, even if that viral, ukulele-playing teacher was making a joke. Her screaming also reflected the very serious struggles that many teachers face with virtual learning.

“The word I keep coming up with is challenging,” said Jessica Jones, a first-grade special education teacher in East New York. “It was already new to us, the whole curriculum that we were teaching. So, now we had to teach it remotely on your computer. It was really challenging.”

It was a whole lot of juggle.

“When I was teaching in the same room with my kids, I could write on the board, at the same time as I talked, at the same time as I walked around and glanced at kids’ papers, at the same time as I walked over to the door and let somebody in,” said Rebecca Jackson, a math teacher at New Visions Charter High School for the Humanities IV in Far Rockaway, Queens.

On her Zoom call with this Spectrum reporter, her background picture was a photoshopped image of herself in front of a Mars rover. It suggested something, perhaps, about how she’s been feeling lately.

“For me to write on the board on Zoom,” Jackson continued. “For me to admit somebody in the classroom I had to use the mouse. And for me to call on somebody, I had to use the mouse. So, everything was just slower.”

Part of the challenge also was figuring out how to navigate websites and online learning applications properly without having been trained in how to do that fluidly.

Once some teachers found answers and tools by searching the internet, they hit other roadblocks, including trying to teach students who had no computers or mobile devices to get into meetings or who had computers but a bad wifi signal.

Students enrolled in special education may have had the hardest time of all, said Abimbola Kae-Lewis, a special education teacher at Middle School 266 in Brooklyn.

“Essentially, all we had was a three-day, on-site training with our principal, assistant principal and anybody who had the background information for it. And we had to hit the ground running,”. Kai-Lewis said, summarizing how teachers were prepped before they abruptly moved from actual classrooms to virtual ones this past spring.

That wasn’t nearly enough preparation for her to adequately teach her particular group of learners. “If they have ADHD,” she said, of those with attention-deficit, hyperactivity disorder, “it’s very difficult for them to remain in one place in front of a computer while we’re doing an hour to an hour and a half long activity.

“We have students who are still learning English, and they weren’t able to connect with their [English as new language] teacher due to challenges with technology that made it very difficult for them to do the work. And you see that the suffering occurred … ”

Deonne Brydie, a sixth-grade teacher at Canarsie Ascend Charter School in Brooklyn, also was frustrated by the changes. For one, what used to be an hour set aside for teaching certain subjects became 30 minutes. “I couldn’t really give them the help that they needed,” she said.

Despite all the challenges, some teachers said it’s too soon for schools to open up for in-person learning.

“You can’t teach if you are dead,” said Jones, the East New York teacher, explaining her fears about returning to the classroom with Covid-19 still around.

Some said they do not believe plans for hybrid learning, with kids in class and at home on alternating days, socially distanced and wearing masks, is solid or safe enough.

“Yes,” said Brydie, of Carnarsie, “they’re putting some … things in place. However, I just don’t think it’s really thought out. I feel like it’s for money. Like, ‘We need to open because we need the money.’ ”

“Students do not know how to socially distance,’ said Jarrel Doorn, a New Visions physics teacher. “And, in terms of having students wear their masks all the time, that’s going to be another task.”

Doorn’s New Vision colleagues said similar things.

“There are parts of the country where, it’s clear to me, that they’re opening too soon and that it’s become a political thing,” said Jackson, a math teacher. “About the same time I started hearing that low-income and black and brown people were being affected more … was about the same time I started hearing Republicans lost interest in continuing to support people who had to stay home with unemployment funds. And they started talking about we need to open the country back up,”

It’s a Catch-22, Jackson added. She knows, for example, that schools are where some students get their most nutritious meals of the day. Kids poor enough to qualify for free breakfasts and lunches didn’t get those during quarantine, with schools closed.

Despite all those concerns, pediatricians and others have said keeping students at home for another semester or school year will do harm. “Time with other children is a crucial piece of growing up. Relationships with peers are how kids learn about cooperation, trust, and loyalty, as well as how to not just receive support from their parents, but also give it to others,” wrote author and science writer Lydia Denworth in The Atlantic.

“A lot of learning is social,” said Jackson, of New Visions. “When you get stuck in class, you turn to the smart kid sitting next to you, instead, of waiting for the teacher to come back to you and, say, ‘What am I doing wrong here?’ And that kid clears it up for you in two seconds, and then both of you can get on with what you’re doing. And that is way harder in a distance setting.”