San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
IN ZOOM ERA, KIDS’ LEARNING IS ALL ABOUT CONNECTIONS
Bay Area parents and children adjust to a new school reality
For his first day of kindergarten at Claire Lilienthal school, James “JJ” Klos wanted everything his big brother Charlie got three years ago. So his mom, Cathy Tran, dressed him in nice clothes and outfitted him with a new school backpack. She took his picture at the front door. Then she walked him to school as she did with Charlie, which for JJ meant back down the hall and into his bedroom. He sat down at his desk with his mom at his side and dialed into a Zoom session.
“He was brave on his first day. We didn’t have any firstdayofschool tears, which I guess is a pro,” says Tran. “The con is he doesn’t really get to socialize. It’s sad that he can’t be there to interact with the other kids and make new friends.”
Some might see Tran’s reconstruction of a typical first day as sentimental and nostalgic in this harsh new reality. But it was also precisely the right thing to do, according to Rose Messina, director of the SPARK (Successful Preschool Adjustment and Readiness for Kindergarten) Program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
“A major milestone like starting kindergarten needs to be recognized,” says Messina, a social worker and clinician. “We are resuming another school year, but no one thinks that distance learning is the way to go.”
SPARK is part of the larger Center for the Vulnerable Child at Benioff that treats children of all ages, and all ages have been referred from schools, pediatricians and child welfare services. Demand has been constant from the start of the lockdown in March, right through the summer and into the new school year.
Fifty staffers provide services that would normally be conducted in person at schools, at home and at the Oakland clinic. The meetings are now on Zoom, which amplifies the isolation issue for the kids.
“Schools are often a place of refuge for children. They feel there is at least one adult there that they have a connection with. Sometimes it is the school principal. Other times it is the person at the front desk,” Messina says.
This doesn’t carry over to Zoom unless the connection is with the teacher. “The absence of this adult relationship and their peer classmates is significant.”
For instance, one 7yearold patient
having a very bad day smashed the family TV and iPad. That is one way of venting frustration as a result of being cooped up, especially for people who live in apartment buildings that lack outdoor space.
“Recess was a beautiful thing for releasing tension and we no longer have it,” Messina says.
In San Francisco, with its strong parochial tradition, putting on a school uniform can also be a beautiful thing, and in many neighborhoods you can see girls in plaid or herringbone jumpers or skirts, or boys in pants and Vnecks, playing on the sidewalks in front of their homes. There is no order from the Archdiocese of San Francisco requiring uniforms, but St. Vincent de Paul School in Cow Hollow is asking all 235 students to wear theirs, even as they attend school via Zoom. “When you wear a uniform at home you feel professional and act accordingly,” says Patricia Shanks, extended care director at St. Vincent de Paul School.
One parent who was able to replicate her backtoschool ritual was Karna Nisewaner of Palo Alto. She is a San Jose tech attorney while her husband, Arne Stokstad, works in human resources for BART. They have their kids in a community child care program located on the campus of their neighborhood public school, Addison Elementary. On the first day of school, she took a picture of secondgrade son Liam and fifthgrade daughter Elsa in front of their townhouse then walked them three blocks to their classes.
“We scooted to school like we normally do,’’ Nisewaner says.
But instead of entering Addison, they took their schoolissued Chromebooks into the child care center in the school to Zoom in on class from the secure building. They are picked up again at 4 p.m. for the walk home.
“What we found in the spring is being home isolated just destroyed their moods,” says Nisewaner, whose own mood was destroyed by having to help her kids on Zoom when she should have been on her own client video calls.
“I’m sure young people are picking up on our anxiety,” says parent Cathy Tran, who is also president of the PTA at Claire Lilienthal. Their first PTA meeting of the year was the most wellattended meeting ever, right up until the moment it was hacked, with school Principal Moira Zacharakis in attendance.
“Everything bad that happens when you get Zoombombed happened,” says parent Kelly Tunstall, who finally got up her nerve to join the PTA at this meeting.
Passwords are always a complaint, the distance learning curriculum is not. The San Francisco Unified School District took everything it learned from the misadventures in the spring and came out this fall with a first 30 days’ program. The emphasis is on the community. Strict Zoom lessons are downplayed. Kindergartners like JJ Klos sitting in his bedroom still get to have circle time and songs. They get to share drawings through a videochat program called Seesaw.
Every child in the district who needed one was issued a Chromebook, but children were also issued tablets and pencils, anything that makes school a tactile experience.
“It is all about getting kids to share their interests as a way to get to know each other and build a sense of belonging in their school and in their class,” says Zareen Poonen Levien, personalized learning environments program manager at San Francisco Unified.
Even during screen time there is an emphasis on getting the kids to converse with each other. The mute button is a new toy.
Tunstall’s fifthgrader, Brixton Plock, had his 11th birthday during the first week of school. Since his is often the first school birthday of the year, it is normally a todo. His parents, both artists, usually decorate their Richmond District flat and make a cake for a party that includes Brixton’s classmates and their parents. This year, the fifthgraders in Brixton’s class chanted “happy birthday” in each of the individual squares on the screen, instead. It wasn’t the same, but the faces were still there.
“That community aspect is a big win,” says Tunstall. “These are people that we know that are on the screen, so we don’t feel so alone.”
“These little parts of childhood are different,” Tunstall says, “but the kids are resilient.”
Asked if there has been any trouble with remote learning, Tunstall says, “The only meltdown was mine. I missed having the first day of school. That is not something you get back.”