Families face big tests with online and hybrid learning
One household in San Jose is taking it ‘one day at a time’ while adpating to conditions
As the coronavirus pandemic surges into autumn, California’s students, teachers and families are embarking on an extraordinary school year. Most of the usual backto-school traditions have been scrapped. Now, students in most parts of the state are getting to know new teachers, learning new skills and meeting new friends virtually, in a high-tech experiment that will likely affect education in California for years to come.
This is the first in a continuing series on how California families are confronting the learning challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis.
With thousands of campuses closed for in-person instruction, many students will weather the pandemic at home, following their teachers on Zoom and navigating lessons and projects on their own. Other students, meanwhile, are still struggling to obtain tablets or laptops, reliable internet access and quiet places to study. And some students are cautiously venturing back to the classroom, in hybrid schedules with students spending part of the week in school and part at home attending virtually, intended to keep children safe while offering some semblance of normalcy.
In a continuing series, EdSource will be tracking families throughout the state. We’ll find out what’s working, what’s not and how students and their families feel about the state of our K-12 public education system as it adapts to these tumultuous times.
Here’s one story from a family in San Jose:
Although the real estate agent didn’t list it as such, Kathy Lieu and Andrew Tran moved last month into a four-classroom home in San Jose. At least that’s what it has become, now that each of their four children has a room and a computer to do distance learning in relative peace.
Lieu and Tran, who immigrated from Vietnam a quarter-century ago, work in tech. If anything convinced them of the need for a bigger home, it was the inaugural run with remote learning in March. It was “chaotic,” said Lieu, a software engineer who writes computer programs at home for a company in Chico. The kids, ages 7 to 15, shared a common area on the second floor of their previous home. The internet was slow, learning was sporadic and her twins, then in sixth grade, fought over who got the better Chromebook.
“We just took it one day at a time,” Lieu said. “There was always something new that was going to happen the next day. It’s like, ‘My internet doesn’t work.’ ‘My computer is so slow.’ ‘It froze.’ All that commotion going on at the same time.” Because the twins,
Karyn and Aidan, were in the same class at the Alpha Cornerstone Academy Preparatory School, a charter school, they were on Zoom at the same time, but separately in the house.
Now, by chance, the two are in different schools. Aidan won the lottery to attend a much-in-demand — and demanding — charter school, University Preparatory Academy. Karyn is in her first year at College Connection Academy, an unusual collaboration of Franklin McKinley School District, East Side Union High School District and Evergreen Valley College. Starting in seventh grade, a cohort of students accelerates through middle and high school, where they are taught by community college instructors and get credit for a year of college courses.
Big sister Carly, 15, now a sophomore, decided to switch from College Connection to another East Side Union high school, Silver Creek, where she has friends. And 7-yearold Camdyn is at the charter school that the twins had attended, Alpha Cornerstone Academy Preparatory School.
Lieu and Tran said they’re optimistic about the fall after their kids finished their first week of school. Teachers appear better prepared, and the family is, too. But even with
a big upgrade in broadband at a promotional price, the family, with five users at one time, taxed the system, and went over the 1,200-gigabyte per month limit, incurring extra charges.
As an electrical engineer who works for a telecommunications company, Tran goes to the office most days. That leaves Lieu to ride herd over the kids.
The girls appear to be better self-starters. Karyn’s teacher requires that students keep the Zoom video on and the audio unmuted, which forces everyone else to keep the noise down — which would have been impossible at the old house. Lieu caught Aidan watching YouTube instead of the class the other day. She’s forgiving. We all multi-task, she said.
Camdyn requires the most attention, his mother said. His 8 am to 12:30 pm schedule is long for a second-grader, and he complains he’s bored. Throw in lunch breaks at different times for the other kids, and it’s a long day, with many distractions for Lieu. Except for her own Zoom meetings, her schedule is flexible as long as work gets done. Which is sometimes at midnight or 1 am, after the kids are long in bed.