Virus throws schools a learning curve
Districts working on options for students as classrooms are closed
Bay Area schools had billed this week’s coronavirus closures as a sort of extended spring break, but Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reality check Tuesday night — that shutdowns to slow the disease’s spread could last until summer — has left them scrambling to process what that might mean for student learning.
The tech-rich Bay Area, where many students already do assignments on computers at home, is perhaps better positioned than most to teach students online for an extended time. But some schools — particularly in wealthy communities — are further ahead than others, and few have tried to teach so much online for so long.
“It’s going to be a big experiment,” said a fifth grade teacher at a Silicon Valley school Wednesday, who is not
authorized to speak for the school and asked not to be identified. “We don’t know how that’s going to work.”
Several districts around the Bay Area have sent advisories to parents indicating that they would provide further details later. In many cases, teachers are taking it upon themselves to communicate with their students to provide lesson plans or daily schedules to help them and their parents manage their time while they stay at home.
Christine Ibarra, Antioch Unified School District associate superintendent of educational services, said school leaders “were shocked” when they heard the governor’s warning that schools might have to remain closed through summer and are now “exploring every option for learning.”
Ibarra said packets for K-8 learning and high school core classes such as English, math, social studies and science are being produced to distribute to students during the free grab-and-go breakfast/lunch programs
no later than Monday. In addition, elementary school students already are working in an online program, which they can continue to access for five weeks of instruction from home if they have internet access, she said. That curriculum might be expanded if the amount of time off extends, she added.
“We are just taking everything day by day,” Ibarra said. “It’s changing rather rapidly, which is prompting us to make changes in the way we are going to respond.”
Educators said students will advance to their next grade level and graduate on schedule but acknowledged some of the learning they were expected to get this spring could simply be lost and will have to be covered in their next grade level or in college.
Chris D. Funk, superintendent of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, said seniors will receive their credits and graduate, but students in lower grades may be making up for a lot of lost time when school resumes.
“This will be an asterisk in time for school districts,”
Funk said. “We’re just going to shorten the school year. If you’re a current junior, you’ll make it up in the next grade level. It will not impact kids going to college for the fall.”
Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Mary Ann Dewan said “the governor caught us all by surprise” and that educators who had planned on a short-term closure are trying to figure out how they would deal with something significantly longer.
“I definitely think there’s the huge possibility that learning time is going to be lost and going to vary quite a bit by community or person, and we’re trying to think through how to increase access and opportunity, what resources might be available over the summer or the course of next year to bridge that gap,” Dewan said.
For students, what began as a disorienting week of doing limited schoolwork while confined at home began to look grimmer amid uncertainty over graduation ceremonies and advancedplacement tests.
“I’m scared that I’m going to fall behind and we’re not going to be prepared next year when we’re going into
our senior year,” said Julisa Gomez, 16, a junior at San Jose’s Independence High School who hopes to study law at Stanford someday.
Nancy Magee, superintendent of the San Mateo County Office of Education, said her greatest concern academically is for 10th and 11th graders who are in the years that count most toward college applications.
“Those kids are in the most vulnerable position for college,” Magee said. “All the systems in education are having to adapt, look at policies, understand and grasp the total weight of what’s occurring in the state and across the country.”
Newsom on Wednesday issued an executive order to suspend standardized testing for the state’s 6 million K-12 students in light of the outbreak, saying “this time is stressful enough for students, families and educators without the additional burden.”
The College Board, which produces the SAT and Advanced Placement exams, said this week it is canceling the May 2 SAT and will provide future opportunities for students to take it. It also is “developing tools to mitigate
the impact of school closures on students in the Advanced Placement Program.”
The University of California also said it is discussing accommodations that may be made for students “should their last semester of high school classes and A-G requirement fulfillment be impacted during this time.”
Adrienne Barber, of San Jose, has a dual role: as a second grade teacher at an elementary school in Milpitas and as mother, helping her sixth grade daughter, who also is a student at the school, keep up with classwork remotely.
Barber praised Milpitas Unified for making sure all its students were equipped with Chrome laptops and has let parents know how they can sign up for free or low-cost Wi-Fi. She said the district had already begun encouraging its teachers to augment classroom instruction with online programs. As a result, her daughter and her students are familiar with programs they are not using at home.
Still, Barber said, nothing replaces having teachers and students in the same classroom. That’s certainly the case in younger grades when much of learning focuses on teachers helping students build social, finemotor and other skills that enhance academic development. With younger kids, she said it’s also important to get them moving from one activity to another every 20 minutes.
“Kids that age can’t sit still for an hour and do one thing. Even the exceptionally bright ones won’t sit for an hour,” Barber said.
She has tried to replace the hugs and morning checkins with daily YouTube videos, in which she reads her students a story, tells a joke, recites a poem and suggests an activity — like turning a hallway into a bowling alley and using plastic water bottles as pins. In one video, Barber delivered the message, “There are things you might want to do right now, and places you want to go. Maybe you can’t do them today, and maybe not tomorrow,” she said.
“This is a pretty hard time for all of us right now.”