MPS TEACHERS STAY CONNECTED
With videos, phone calls and food deliveries, lifeline for community and families keeps in touch
Two kindergarten teachers at Milwaukee’s Neeskara Elementary School post daily videos on YouTube, leading their students through reading and counting lessons, and even breathing and yoga practices. ❚ A crew of kitchen workers rises each morning to make the thousands of meals being distributed to children and families at 20 schools across the district. ❚ Teachers are reaching out to families in distressed neighborhoods, delivering food and supplies to those who need them.
And at the central offices of the state’s largest school district, a corps of administrators and other staff prepare academic packets, oversee food sites, field calls from worried parents and ensure workers are paid.
Even in the best of times, Milwaukee Public Schools principals, teachers and staff are a lifeline for many of the 75,000 students they serve, most of them low-income children of color.
In addition to academics, schools are where many students are fed two meals a day, where they receive mental health services to counter the often daily trauma of their lives, where they have safe places to stay and play after school and where their families get connected to vital resources in their community.
Now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which has closed schools in Wisconsin and across the country,
many of the district’s staff and even volunteers are trying to maintain that lifeline under what most would have considered unimaginable circumstances just a few weeks ago.
“Milwaukee Public Schools and the people who work there are really trying to ... function as a social safety net for students and families because there aren’t enough,” said Amy Mizialko, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.
A link to little learners
Meredith Grob Polewski sits crosslegged on the floor of her living room, a hand-drawn calendar propped up in a frame beside her.
“Good morning, kiddos. It is Monday. And I thought it would be nice to start our week with our calendar,” she says, smiling and waving into the video camera operated by her 12-year-old daughter, Izzy.
“As you can see, our calendar looks different than it did at school,” she tells her Neeskara kindergartners. “But that’s OK. We’re going to make it work.”
“Making it work” could be the motto for the many MPS teachers who — like Polewski — are staying connected virtually to their students during the break, whether on platforms like YouTube, Google Classroom and ClassDojo, or just plain phone and email.
Since the start of the break, Polewski and Lisa Schnell, Neeskara’s earlychildhood teacher who works particularly with students who are deaf and hard of hearing, have been posting daily lessons on YouTube. They sing and read and count. They practice writing their letters and numbers and just cheerfully interact with the kids, as kindergarten teachers are wont to do.
In one segment, Schnell is seen standing in a barn reading “The Red Rooster” as a real rooster can be heard crowing in the background. In another segment, on measurements, Polewski shows her students how to make sidewalk chalk with cornstarch, water and food coloring. Polewski’s dog, Peanut Butter, and cat, Tod, made occasional appearances in her videos, though Peanut Butter has since been banished because he’s too barky.
The teachers then post links to the videos on their ClassDojo, a kind of Facebook for schools that connects parents and teachers.
“We thought this would be a good way to stay connected to our kids and give our families an idea about how we’ve been presenting information so they can continue at home if they want to,” said Polewski.
It’s a first for Polewski in her 20 years in the classroom.
“It’s definitely a different way to teach.”
Their videos also feature segments on yoga and breathing techniques they use in their classrooms to help their students calm themselves so they are ready to learn. Their hope is that parents and siblings can use the techniques as well, to find some respite and comfort in what may be one of the most stressful times in their lives.
“Hopefully, they’ll be able to use these to get through all of this a little more easily,” Polewski said.
Executing the plan
In the initial days after Superintendent Keith Posley announced that schools would shut down, sending most of MPS’ 10,000 employees home, a team of district administrators and other staff gathered at the district’s central offices on West Vliet Street.
Spreading out inside the massive complex, in keeping with recommendations around social distancing, they set about executing a plan laid out by the coronavirus task force Posley had convened weeks before as fears of the pandemic rose across the country.
In the coming weeks, they would need to staff 20 sites at schools around the district where employees and volunteers would distribute thousands of prepackaged meals and academic workbooks for every grade level.
They began notifying the key workers needed to prepare the food and staff the sites: principals and kitchen workers, building engineers and safety officers. The academic office had been pulling together the content for the workbooks. And the print shop employees worked long into the nights copying what would be 30,000 booklets in the first run.
On that first weekend, in the midst of the crush, district officials got another blow, learning that a teacher at Hopkins-Lloyd Elementary School had tested positive for the virus. They had to switch gears, to quickly notify families, provide necessary information to the Milwaukee Health Department and respond
Monica Gahan tends to the horse named Winnie on the farm. Gahan, the animal science pathway teacher at Vincent High School in Milwaukee, is taking care of the animals at the small farm that the school runs on campus. to media questions at a news conference.
That ability to pivot quickly has been essential day to day.
“People are just doing whatever needs to be done,” said Marla Bronaugh, chief communications and school performance officer for the district. “It’s a huge responsibility. We need to make sure our families have what they need to the extent that we can do it for them.”
That is a source of pride for Deb Brunner, a dietician coordinator and longtime MPS employee who signed up to work during the shutdown, even before the school board voted to pay most employees whether they worked or not.
“A lot of work had to be done in a very short period of time,” she said of that first weekend when the operation was kicked into gear. “We are very proud of what we have been able to accomplish.” And that work continues.
Early every morning, nutrition workers gather at a handful of district kitchens to prepare the meals that are then delivered to the 20 school sites. At each of the schools, principals, staff and volunteers are on hand to address families’ concerns. And back at central office, essential staff field calls from parents and staff, deal with vendors and troubleshoot issues that arise in the emergency operation.
Each morning, around 7:30, MPS school board President Larry Miller phones Posley for a brief update, after which the superintendent meets with his chief administrators to assess the previous day’s work and troubleshoot any issues.
“Are there any areas we missed?” Posley asked at one meeting where a reporter sat in. “Any food deserts or large areas where people don’t have access to food?”
They talked about the logistics of getting enough academic packets to each site and the possibility of having to print a second round; donations of crayons and coloring books for younger students that might be added to the packets; and the ongoing discussions with Verizon, MPS’ internet provider, about how to reach more students with online materials.
Posley took a minute to acknowledge the hard work of the staff, from the kitchen workers and safety officers to his top executives.
“All of the staff have been going, going, going, with little sleep,” he said. “There are some people who have just really rolled up their sleeves and went at it. Those are the kind of people who make this happen.”
Serving the most vulnerable
Earlier this week, a team of volunteers led by Ingrid Henry, an organizer with the teachers union, dropped off bags of food to about 10 families in Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code, one of the poorest areas of the city.
Across town, Pulaski High School teacher Bridget Spoerri has been packaging small bags of supplies — toothpaste, deodorant, cereal, canned goods, granola bars and the like — to drop off on students’ porches.
And around the district, Francisca “Kika” Meraz and her fellow English as a Second Language teachers have spent days calling hundreds of students’ families, making sure with the help of interpreters that they understand why their children were out of school and what resources are available for them.
Even in the best of times, navigating the American education system and cultural landscape can be a struggle for immigrant and refugee families, and the teachers were concerned that they might feel particularly isolated. During her calls, Meraz said, she gave each of her families her phone number so they can reach her if needed, and reminded the kids to check an app for updates on coursework.
“We have over 26 languages in our building,” said Merz, who serves about 90 students at South Division High School, most of them from Asia, Africa and Latin America. “Some of them had not gotten the information in their own languages.”
The effort in 53206 was a collaboration between MPS, the teachers union and United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County, which work together on MPS’ community schools initiative. The idea was to target families at the three community schools there — Auer Avenue, North Division and HopkinsLloyd — some of whom may have lost income as businesses shut down or had difficulty getting to one of the meal sites or grocery stores. Hopkins-Lloyd families, for example, had been asked to self-quarantine after the teacher at their school was diagnosed and hospitalized with the virus.
Spoerri decided to create the porch bags because she knows many of her students lack transportation and may have difficulty accessing one of the MPS meal sites. So, she hit up her friends and family for donations, raising about $125 for supplies.
“They’re just little items that we take for granted that can be hard for our kids to get,” said Spoerri, who teaches English and theory of knowledge in Pulaski’s International Baccalaureate pilot program. “Some of my kids really just eat the meals at school. That might be all they get.”
Spoerri said some of her students are working over the break or looking for jobs. She drove one girl to an interview last week. She’s also checking in with them on Google Classroom, letting them know where their grades are, answering questions and generally assuaging the concerns, particularly of seniors who are worried about what this all means for graduation and beyond.
“My connection to them doesn’t stop just because we’re not in school,” Spoerri said. “Just being available to my students, letting them know I’m here for them is important.”
Out on the farm
For Monica Gahan, the animal science teacher at Vincent High School, the break has meant tending not so much to her students, but to the creatures they’ve nurtured and come to love.
There are the African sulcata tortoise and the bearded dragon, the chinchillas and the rabbits and the hedgehog; the horse and the heifers, the chickens and ducks, and the mama goats about to kid.
Since the start of the shutdown, Gahan has spent most days leading a crew of volunteers who’ve stepped up to feed the animals and clean the barns at Vincent, home to Milwaukee County’s only high school agriculture program and Future Farmers of America Club.
And while she has been reaching out to students — checking on how they’re doing, offering to drop off lunches and schoolwork — her main mission has been keeping their animals alive and well.
“I can’t not do it,” said Gahan, who when not on the farm is often out buying feed and other supplies for the animals. “They need to eat. I can’t leave them . ... Thankfully, we got to keep them all at the building.”
When it became clear a shutdown was imminent, some of the students asked if they could take their smaller animals home. But there just wasn’t time to arrange it, said Gahan.
So, she spent three hours drafting an extensive “to-do” list — with pictures and captions — then recruited volunteers. Her fellow ag teachers signed up, but so did the culinary arts and chemistry teachers, even the science curriculum instructor from central office.
One of their alumni — Brandon Albright, who showed his 1,055-pound Charolais cross heifer at last year’s Wisconsin State Fair — also dropped in to help.
First things first, they moved all of the classroom animals, 27 in all, to the greenhouse, because the building’s unpredictable boiler can send classroom temperatures soaring unexpectedly.
“Earlier in the week, we knew the weather would be nice, so we cleaned out the majority of the barns,” she said.
She took on one of the dirtier jobs, cleaning the small animal cages. But the list of chores for everyone is extensive.
“They have to switch the horse around, feed everybody, clean the water buckets, get hay to who needs hay and grain to who needs grain ... collect the eggs, take care of the ducks and make sure everyone’s healthy,” she said. “Then inside (the greenhouse), because of the variety of animals, they need to know who gets what food, make sure water bottles are filled...”
Her biggest concern right now is her female goats, five of them, all ready to kid in early April.
One of the highlights of the year for Gahan’s students is showing their animals at the Wisconsin State Fair and she’s worried now that the shutdown could upend that. It’s a big commitment of time and money, and decisions have to be made soon.
“What are we going to do? Are we even going to be in business?” she said. “The State Fair says we are. But it’s a big unknown. Nobody really knows that for sure.”
PrincessSafiya Byers of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.