Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close in March, Elise Wilson has had a lot on her plate.
Two of her three children are learning remotely as New Hope Elementary School students, and the youngest is at home instead of day care. Her job as an executive administrative assistant at Dutch Oil Company is considered essential, so she works from home most days, and she is set to finish her master’s degree in gender studies at the Mississippi University for Women in May.
“All my classes were online anyway, so there really wasn’t much of a transition in that regard,” Wilson said. “For me, the biggest transition has been not having time to actually do my schoolwork because my entire family is at home.”
Online education at the K-12 level has several variables that students, parents and teachers have had to adapt to quickly. It relies on technology and internet service when not everyone has equal access to both, and the home environment provides distractions that don’t exist in classrooms.
Teachers also have to be reachable via phone and video conference to make up for the lack of in-person interaction, and they have had to get creative with how they present their virtual lessons.
Depending on the district, some teachers have designated office hours during the week, while others develop lessons and are on call during regular school hours. Districts also have compiled and made available paper learning packets for students who do not have high-speed internet at home.
“I think the biggest challenge has been that there was no prep time,” Lowndes County School District Superintendent Sam Allison said. “We left for spring break thinking, ‘We’ll see ya in a week.’ We never went back. So there was no time to set an online expectation or get information of who has online access and who doesn’t.”
The switch to online learning was not always easy for Lorine Clark and her four grandchildren she is raising, she said. Among them, the children attend three different schools in the Columbus Municipal School District.
“It was challenging at first, very challenging, but we just had to stick with it and we did,” Clark said. “With the help of the teachers we were able to come a long way.”
One benefit to students has been the state board of education waiving end-of-year testing requirements.
Making education accessible
Laura Daniels’ two daughters attend Starkville High School and Armstrong Middle School, respectively. SHS teachers have conducted online study groups for Advanced Placement classes, and AMS teachers have assigned a variety of remote lessons, from virtual field trips to writing projects about students’ experiences staying at home, Daniels said.
“They’ve engaged them in creative ways, they’ve utilized online resources as well as been sensitive to the fact that they sometimes just need time to talk,” she said.
Columbus High School has been using online learning tools for a few years, so moving all lessons online was not difficult, but the difficulties come from internet access and teacher availability, lead teacher Monte Ewing said.
“A student may be working at home independently and need support from a teacher at that moment, and they might not have instant access to a teacher,” Ewing said. “Although the teachers are available (at different times of the day), the student might need assistance at 5 p.m. and the teacher’s not available.”
CMSD attempted to close internet access gaps by setting up Wi-Fi hotspots soon after schools closed in March. The district removed Wi-Fi routers from nine buses and installed them at elementary campuses, the Brandon Central Services building and at Columbus community centers.
The Brandon Central Services hotspot has been vital to one Cook Elementary School fourth-grader, Henry Beltran, whose family immigrated from El Salvador last year and speaks very little English, said Courtney Stanback, a former CMSD Spanish and ESL teacher.
The Beltran family does not have internet access at home but lives in walking distance from the hotspot, Stanback said.
“They had received a packet of information for Henry to work on, (but) because he’s an English learner, the packet was extremely difficult for him,” she said.
The hotspot allows Henry to access his school’s Rosetta Stone membership for free in order to complete his schoolwork, “and he loves it,” Stanback said.
Ewing said a benefit of virtual learning is that students can get ahead in their coursework if they choose to, or catch up if they were behind. So far no one is falling behind in her sophomore English class, and students have been participating and completing their assignments, she said.
Students in all three districts have a variety of ways to contact their teachers in the absence of the face-to-face interaction they are used to. Carrie Ray, an eighth-grade English teacher at Caledonia Middle School, said not seeing her students in person “was very weird at first.”
“Of course, I think this has been a good thing in a way because I think it’s encouraged them to reach out to their teachers,” Ray said.
Daniels, Clark and Wilson each said the teachers in their respective school districts have done a good job communicating with them and the students. SHS junior Makenzie Stone said her teachers kept her and other students as informed as they possibly could during the transition to online classes.
“It’s been kind of a learning curve for everyone but we’re doing pretty well right now,” Stone said.
Camra Harrison offers video conference meetings just to check in with her third graders at Cook, and she said about half the class of 18 students participated in a meeting on Tuesday.
The parents have been especially supportive of online teaching efforts and in regular contact with her, she said.
“They’re working with us to make sure their students are still working,” Harrison said. “They’re not treating this as an extended vacation.”
Challenges for families
Teachers who are also parents, like Ray, have found ways to juggle both responsibilities.
“I feel like I’m homeschooling and teaching online, so it’s the best of both worlds here,” said Ray, whose children are in fifth grade and kindergarten, respectively. “I haven’t had a ton of downtime, but we’re learning how to do chores around the house too on top of schoolwork.”
Clark said she appreciates that teachers have not put pressure on students to get their schoolwork done. The tougher adjustment for her is making sure her grandchildren stay focused, since they have to sit in front of the computer a lot more than they did in school, and they want to stay up later now that they no longer have to wake up early to catch the bus, she said.
“The work has gotten done, but they’ve been a little bit slow, and you have to give them that extra nudge,” Clark said.
Wilson agreed that home has distractions that school does not, and kids would rather play or watch TV than do schoolwork. Additionally, her second-grader does not enjoy reading and would cooperate with a teacher but is more inclined to challenge her mother, Wilson said.
She also has to supervise her children’s use of technology, which she would not have to do as much if they were older, she said.
“I can’t just let them go to sign onto their stuff,” Wilson said. “I have to work through each problem with them and explain things step by step.”
Meanwhile, she is trying to find opportunities “to string together educational thoughts without being interrupted” so she can finish her master’s with four other people in the house, she said.
“I would just hole away at Starbucks or Coffee House on 5th on the weekends (in Columbus) for three to four hours and knock out my schoolwork, and that’s no longer an option,” she said. “I don’t have a quiet place to go, (but) that’s a very privileged thing and I realize that.”
Dispatch staff writer Garrick Hodge contributed to this story.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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