Teaching and learning in 06605
The fundamentals of education are pretty simple: teachers impart instruction to students; the students respond. Though the fundamentals are clear, educating youngsters is a tricky, challenging proposition under the best of circumstances.
Toss in COVID- 19. There is no “Pandemic Playbook” for educators to rely on. So, in Bridgeport, as around the country, people like Brett Gustafson, the 49- year- old principal at the James J. Curiale Elementary School, and the rest of his colleagues, administrators and teachers, are writing it. On the spot, as they go.
The ZIP code is 06605.
If ever there was a compelling example of the disparity in educational opportunity based on where a child is born and lives, Curiale school is it.
The school, at 300 Laurel Ave., shares a single block — bounded by Sherwood, Laurel and Wood avenues and Norman Street — on the city’s West Side with a firehouse — Engine companies 3 and 4 — and Laurelwood Place, a high- rise apartment building tower for the elderly.
The school is at the edge of what some call the city’s Little Asia section, but the district serviced by Curiale is far more diverse.
While the Pho Hong Thom and the Pho Sai Gon Vietnamese restaurants are a short distance from the school, so, too, are restaurants named Ocho Rios Jerk Center, La Flor de Mexico and Bridgeport Halal Fish and Chips.
It’s a neighborhood of tired triple- deckers bristling with satellite dishes, the occasional scorched structures and small stores..
One hundred percent of the school’s 555 students get free lunch. One percent of the school’s population lives above the poverty line, he said.
On a recent morning, Gustafson was rocking jeans and a gray- and- blue Curiale Bulldogs T- shirt as he moved between conference calls. In the lobby, were packets of instructional material prepared for students who don’t have online access. Outside were bins where the work could be dropped off.
A skeleton crew of masked staff was inside.
Gustafson spoke of the challenge he, his teachers and colleagues confront. “In some ways,” he said, “this is a little bit like a major military maneuver. The organization, we’re talking sometimes like in 24 hours, we had to get teachers on to teams, or whatever computer program, so that they could start teaching. People did it because they care about kids. There was frustration. It was a small miracle. If you told me at the beginning of the year, ‘ OK, you’re going to have to do online learning for all your kids, make a plan for kids who can’t get online and make sure your teachers are trained for this,’ I’d have said, ‘ OK, you’re going to give me six months, right?”
The school handed out about 150 laptops and donated tablets for the students to use. Donors have provided supermarket gift cards, bins of Legos. And the school can always use donations of basic school supplies — markers, pencils, pads and so on.
Also outside the school is a station for the “Grab and Go” food program. Since the schools closed, they have been providing bagged meals — three a day — for families.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Curiale provided some 4,000 breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
“A lot of our parents have probably lost their jobs, so they’re dealing with the stress of ‘ Are we going to be able to keep this apartment?’” he said. “They just don’t have the money they had when they were working.”
Gustafson’s praise for his teachers is lavish. They are “working their butts off to make this work. Kids are emailing them at nine o’clock at night, and they’re getting back to them. I’ve sat in on some of the online sessions,” he said, “and the teachers start off by asking ‘ How’s everyone doing.’ They’re trying to address the emotional issue of these kids, too.
“Some of them have literally been inside their house since this started,” he said. One family, he added, had to leave their home after a fire and is now living in a shelter. “They lost pretty much everything in the fire, and what they didn’t lose, people came in and stole the next day,” he said.
Gustafson came to Bridgeport in 2012 from P. S. 2 Meyer London in New York City’s Chinatown, where he was a principal for 10 years On a wall in his office are three works of Chinese calligraphy, which he bought on a trip to China. I admired them. He stood and walked to one.
“It says ‘ Work as hard as you can for success,” he said.
The future? Uncertainty. “Maybe we’ll have shifts. You know, 275 kids come on these days, and 275 come on these days.”
More chapters to write for the playbook.