‘We’re all feeling a little stressed’
College students with children face overwhelming balancing act
MINNEAPOLIS — Ever since the pandemic began, Amanda Schermerhorn has put her children’s schooling before her own.
Managing her four kids’ ever-changing remote and in-person class schedules is often a full day’s work. So Schermerhorn, a full-time student at Minnesota State Community and Technical College in Detroit Lakes, works around the clock, carving out time to complete her online classwork late at night and early in the morning.
“Juggling four schedules in addition to mine definitely makes it a lot more hectic,” said Schermerhorn, who used to study during the day while her kids were at school. “We’re all feeling a little stressed.”
College students have battled stress and burnout during the pandemic, but perhaps no group of students has been more overwhelmed than those who are raising children while they pursue a degree. These students are scrambling daily to meet class deadlines, earn a paycheck and oversee their children’s lessons. And they are weathering this exhausting academic year without the in-person study groups, tutoring sessions and campus resources they typically rely on.
Now more than ever, advocates say, colleges and universities must prioritize the roughly 1 in 5 undergraduates who are raising children. Student parents, most of whom are women, are far less likely to finish college than others, with just 37% graduating within six years of enrollment, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The obstacles they face, from child care affordability to economic insecurity, have only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Parenting students’ college enrollment is one of the first things that will get sacrificed for
employment or to support their children,” said Carrie Welton, director of policy and advocacy at Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice.
Schermerhorn, 35, has sacrificed sleep, personal time and peace of mind this past year. She’s balancing a full slate of online classes and two internships this semester while caring for her 14-year-old twins, Travis and
Ella, 11-year-old son Sylas and 7-year-old son Richard, who has autism.
When her kids log into class from their home, Schermerhorn stays off the internet to avoid overloading it and waits until night to complete her assignments or parks in front of the college to use the Wi-Fi.
“I want my kids to do well in school, so they are going to take precedence over my work,” Schermerhorn said.
Colleges are doing what they can to support student parents during this time, even though most on-campus services have
been scaled back. They are offering emergency grants to those who are struggling financially. And professors are negotiating deadline extensions and letting parents turn off their webcams during class so they can tend to their kids.
Khou Vue, Metropolitan State University’s student parent and resource coordinator, schedules one-on-one video appointments with students who are struggling to balance their studies and parenthood. She also organizes Zoom workshops and virtual activities to foster a sense of belonging. “We understand that building relationships is a big part of retention,” Vue said.
Advisers at the University of Minnesota’s Student Parent Help Center have had less success arranging virtual meetings and support groups because many students are “Zoomed out,” said Susan Warfield, the center’s program director.
The center’s counselors have instead focused on direct outreach, calling every student
parent twice per semester to see how they are doing. “Some started crying immediately and said, ‘I’m just drowning,’ ” Warfield said. “They were too overwhelmed to think about asking for help.”
State leaders are trying to offer support, too. In his budget proposal released last month, Gov. Tim Walz recommended simplifying the state’s postsecondary child care grant program’s application and award process so more student parents can benefit.
For some parents, the pandemic created the ideal conditions for them to go back to school.
Elena Williams, 29, enrolled in online classes at Minneapolis Community and Technical College last fall. She said she was able to do so only because her full-time job at an accounting firm has also gone remote. Now, Williams can work and pursue a degree from home while caring for her 4-year-old son, Parker.
There are still challenges, like when Parker climbs on his mom’s lap or makes shadow puppets in the background of her Zoom classes — “It’s fun when Mom is on webcam,” Williams laughed. She hopes to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree that will help her secure a promotion and higher salary.
“I don’t want to frame the pandemic as being a good thing, but it’s like I’m getting that opportunity because there’s this increased understanding for what’s going on in people’s lives,” Williams said. She hopes colleges will continue to offer a robust slate of online classes.
Even once the pandemic lets up, Schermerhorn does not expect life to get any less hectic.
Schermerhorn will transfer to Minnesota State University, Moorhead, this fall to pursue a bachelor’s degree in political science. If classes are in person, her round-trip commute from home to the campus will total about two hours.
“Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, then it will,” she said, describing life as a student parent.
LA GOMERA, Spain — Sitting atop a cliff in the Canary Islands, Antonio Márquez Navarro issued an invitation — “Come over here, we’re going to slaughter the pig”— without speaking a word: He whistled it.
In the distance, three visiting hikers stopped dead in their tracks at the piercing sound bouncing off the walls of the ravine that separated them.
Márquez, 71, said that in his youth, when local shepherds rather than tourists walked the steep and rugged footpaths of his island, his news would have been greeted right away by a responding whistle, loud and clear.
But his message was lost on these hikers, and they soon resumed their trek on La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic that is part of Spain.
Márquez is a proud guardian of La Gomera’s whistling language, which he called “the poetry of my island.” And, he added, “like poetry, whistling does not need to be useful in order to be special and beautiful.”
The whistling of the Indigenous people of La Gomera is mentioned in the 15th-century accounts of the explorers who paved the way for the Spanish conquest of the island. Over the centuries, the practice was adapted to communicating in Castilian Spanish.
The language substitutes whistled sounds that vary by pitch and length for written letters. Unfortunately,
there are fewer whistles than there are letters in the Spanish alphabet, so a sound can have multiple meanings, causing misunderstandings.
The sounds made for a few Spanish words are the same — like “sí” (yes) or
“ti” (you) — as are those for some longer words that sound similar in spoken Spanish, like “gallina” or “ballena” (hen or whale).
“As part of a sentence, this animal reference is clear, but not if whistled on its own,” said Estefanía Mendoza, a teacher of the language.
In 2009, the island’s language, officially known as Silbo Gomero, was added by UNESCO to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; the United Nations agency described it as “the only whistled language in the world that is fully developed and practiced by a large community,” in reference to La Gomera’s 22,000 inhabitants.
But with whistling no longer essential for communication, Silbo’s survival mostly relies on a 1999 law that made teaching it an obligatory part of La Gomera’s school curriculum.
On a recent morning at a school in the port town of Santiago, a classroom of 6-year-olds had little difficulty identifying the whistling sounds corresponding to different colors or the days of the week.
Things got trickier when the words were incorporated into full sentences, like “What is the name of the child with the blue shoes?”
If interpreting a whistle
isn’t always easy, making the correct sounds can be even harder. Most whistlers insert one bent knuckle into the mouth, but some use instead the tip of one or two fingers.
“The only rule is to find whichever finger makes it easier to whistle, and sometimes unfortunately nothing works at all,” said Francisco Correa, the coordinator of La Gomera’s school whistling program. “There are even some older people who have understood Silbo perfectly since childhood, but never got any clear sound to come out of their mouth.”
Two whistlers might struggle to understand each other, particularly during their first encounters — and need to ask each other to repeat sentences — like strangers who speak the same language with
different accents. But “after whistling together for a while, their communication becomes as easy as if speaking Spanish,” Correa said.
With its distinct geography, it’s easy to see why whistling came into use on the Canaries; on most of the islands, deep ravines run from high peaks and plateaus down to the ocean, and plenty of time and effort are required to travel even a short distance overland. Whistling developed as a good alternative way to deliver a message, with its sound carrying farther than shouting — as much as 2 miles across some canyons.
Older residents on La Gomera recall how Silbo was used as a warning language, particularly when a police patrol was spotted searching for contraband.
Some other islands in the archipelago have their own whistling languages, but their use has faded, though another island, El Hierro, recently began teaching its version. “Silbo was not invented on La Gomera, but it is the island where it was best preserved,” said David Díaz Reyes, an ethnomusicologist.
Nowadays, La Gomera relies heavily on tourism, which has created an opportunity for some young whistlers like Lucía Darias Herrera, 16, who has a weekly whistling show at an island hotel. While she normally whistles Castilian Spanish, Darias can also adapt her Silbo to other languages spoken by her audience, on an island that is particularly popular with Germans.
Since last spring, however, the coronavirus has not only canceled such shows, but also forced schools to limit their whistling instruction. At a time of compulsory face masks, a teacher cannot help a student reposition a finger inside her mouth in order to whistle better.
Still, some teenagers enjoy whistling greetings to each other when they meet in town and welcome the chance to chat without many of the adults around them understanding. Some had parents who went to school before learning
Silbo became mandatory, or who settled on the island as adults.
Erin Gerhards, 15, sounded keen to improve her whistling and help safeguard the traditions of her island.
“It is a way to honor the people that lived here in the past,” she said.