Distance learning

Speaker 1: 00:00 The school year is ending this week for thousands of San Diego students, COVID-19 force families, teachers, and school administrators, to scramble, to adapt to a new way of learning. It will take time to understand the full impacts of closing schools and moving classes online. But for many, it didn't work as part of the KPBS series, community conversations, producer, Pat Finn spoke to a student, a parent, and a decision maker about how it went for them on the panel are Frank Granda, who will be a senior next year at Sierra high school in Tierrasanta and Ashley Lewis, a parent of two children attending elementary school in San Diego. The conversation starts with San Diego unified school boards. Vice-president Richard Barrera. Speaker 2: 00:44 So our goal has been to provide, you know, uh, as much learning as possible, uh, in a very, very difficult situation. And we'll talk about, you know, what our experience has been to this point, but I would just say, uh, you know, it very, very clear that distance learning is not a viable option for really the majority of students in our district that would have to figure out how to get our students back on campus. Um, we are very concerned about learning loss that's been taking place and we're frankly, as concerned about the social and emotional issues that our students are experiencing, but the sub-district that I represent, which is part of the Southern part of the district. I, you know, we're seeing the stress on families. It's, you know, it's, these are the parents who work in the hotels and work in the restaurants and work as home care providers and have lost jobs have lost hours. And that experience that students, you know, are going through right now is something that will take a lot of social, emotional support when we're able to bring our students back. So Speaker 3: 01:56 I think that that must be yet. That must be very true. And that brings up a whole new area. So Ashley, since you are at how long, and you are dealing with this, um, can you describe, first of all, describe your setup to, to us, where are you, what are you doing? What are your kids doing? How many, what grade been interesting? So I have two kids, both in elementary school. I have a third grader and a first grader, um, and our setup it's, it's pretty tight. We have, you know, we have five people living in a 1200 square foot house and both me and my husband are working from home. And so we don't really have like designated desks for the kids. It's more that they have one table in the corner of the kitchen that has all of their school stuff on it, their math books and their computers and their fraction strips and everything else. Speaker 3: 02:49 And when it's time for schoolwork, they get their stuff and they go sit at the kitchen table or they sit on the couch where they lay on the floor in their bedroom, or they don't really have a designated study space, but I think they kind of prefer, so it works. Okay. Um, from the, like the standpoint of what the school has been giving us, we've been getting pretty good communication from both classroom teachers. They give us like a schedule every week of here's what's expected for the week. Here's when our zoom meetings are, and here are the assignments that are due and the projects we're going to be working on. And that, um, has been extremely helpful just trying to keep both kids organized and make sure they're on top of everything while I'm also working during the day. Um, so I mean, all I can say is it's been, it's been really interesting and there have been a lot of, I think, re describing it is really interesting. Speaker 3: 03:39 It's probably quite generous. Um, so how, how did your, how are your children reacting to the situation? Um, they're very different kids. So my first grader is extremely self motivated and she has, um, I mean, she's really struggling with the social aspect of it. She hasn't been able to see her friends or have a play dates since mid-March, and that has been really, really hard for her, but for when, from a school perspective, she, you know, she'll get her schedule every week and she will go through and check off everything that's due and she's, she can get on her zoom calls by herself. I mean, it took a couple of weeks to get her up, to speed on everything, but for the most part, she knows how to log in to everything. And when she needs help with something, she'll come into my office and she'll sit in the chair in the corner and I'll help her with her math or what are her writing or whatever it is she's working on. Speaker 3: 04:27 She's been doing, I think, as good as any kid could expect to be doing in the circumstances. Um, my other child has special needs. He's autistic. He has ADHD. He is not able to sit and do work on himself who basically needs me or my husband to be with him the entire time to get anything done. Otherwise, you know, I can tell him all day long to go do your math, go do your math or go your writing assignment. And he was not going to do it unless I sit with them. Um, and so that's been very challenging for me, like impacted my career and my income because I have to take half of my day helping him get through his schoolwork before I can actually get to my own work. So that's pretty difficult. And the lack of special education services has been pretty, pretty disappointing. Speaker 3: 05:10 I have to say, cause who would normally be receiving services in the classroom, he would get an hour every day of extra support from an aid in the hospital. He would be doing speech therapy and occupational therapy at the school. And those things have like all but evaporated. I mean, luckily we are able to do our speech sessions over zoom and those I think have actually been going pretty well. I'm pretty pleased with how those have been going. Occupational therapy is more like here's a list of activities you can do with your kid. If you have time, which I'm not a therapist, I'm a smart person. I know how to do a lot of things, but there's so much I can accomplish in my day. So, you know, he's not getting the supports that he needs to, you know, to get the education that he should be getting. Frank, I said, as a student, you had to work from home and do distance learning. How'd that go for a Speaker 4: 05:58 subject like chemistry, which is a lab class. Right? Well, we didn't really do much of labs because I'm the main subject we were doing was, is doing what the issue of climate change and global warming. So well, so what I had to do, basically they had to, um, okay, so every week she would give my chemistry teacher, she would give me to some certain assignments and the assignment is basically something like, um, talk of issue is about fracking. So what I had to do was Angie would give me like, um, like a bunch of questions about fracking and in some notes there was something you, you could do at home. Yes. And I have to, and how to type it up on Google docs. All right, well, let's move on to next year. So we got the fall semester coming up, Richard what's in the works. What plans are there? What's the district working on. Speaker 2: 06:50 We know that we need to have our students back physically on our campuses. And we also know that we have to maintain a distance learning option for students who may have underlying health conditions, or there may be somebody in the family that has underlined conditions. We'll have members of our staff that I also have underlying conditions or somebody in the family. And so we know we've got to maintain a capacity for distance learning for those students who need it. Um, and, but that distance learning option has to be frankly, much more of a high quality option than what has happened over the last three months. We do have, uh, some longstanding distance learning, uh, schools in our district. Mount Everest Academy is an independent study school. I high was established about 10 years ago, uh, to work with students online. So we do have really excellent options that we're going to need to expand and make available to more students because we anticipate that there will be, you know, a certain percentage of students that don't come back, but to get our students physically back on campus, of course, we need to do that in a way that keeps students and staff members safe and stays within the public health guidelines. Speaker 2: 08:11 And so that means everything from, uh, retrofitting our schools so that our students are able to stay six feet apart so that, you know, students can stay on a part of the campus where you've got smaller groups of students who are isolated, frankly, from other small groups of students. It means a nurse in every school. It means a counselor in every school. I strongly believe that we have to have social workers in place in many of our schools to help our families navigate economic stress. Speaker 4: 08:43 This all is extremely expensive, Speaker 2: 08:45 extremely expensive. We estimate that the additional costs are roughly 20 to 30% on top of what a normal school year, uh, looks like California has underfunded public education for over 40 years. And now in order to, uh, open our schools and keep people safe, we've got to have those additional resources, Speaker 3: 09:07 right. Because September is upon us, Ashley. Um, what changes are adjustments would you like to see what would make your life easier? What's missing? I know every parent has a different opinion, but I would have liked to see more actual teaching from teachers. It feels very much like it's on the parents to help their children with everything and to help them learn all the new information. I mean, my kids were getting three to four calls per week for maybe 45 minutes at a time. But I mean, when a teacher is talking to 24 kids on a zoom call, you can only have so much meaningful interaction. Like I think there really needs to be small group virtual calls like that so that kids can have more time to talk and interact with each other. And it's not just a one way receipt of information. Cause at that point they might as well just be watching a video or something, you know, there could be a lot more done with the communication virtually that way. Um, and I really think that you absolutely have to provide the IEP services in person. Like I just don't think you can provide special ed education services at a distance. It doesn't work Frank you're you're up next. Um, if next year when your senior year you had a significant amount of distance learning involved, what changes would you like to see? What, what would make your academic life easier or more rewarding? Let's put it that way. Speaker 4: 10:31 We have to make sure of, at least we have better connection. We kind of see the thing is that every time I try entering a zoom class, for some reason, every single time, it would always, you know, like, like there'll be some weird glitch or something like, so we're book, like for some, for some times it's sometimes I can't hear what the person is under saying. Sometimes the voice is mute sometime to see that would buffer. Sometimes the student would crash and then there would be someone would go and do a zoom bomb. Like where did that inappropriate content? I have a bunch of, I have some experience with that, but I wish not to them share because it's best left thumb appropriately for this type of conversation. And I also, we also need like better timing over teachers because I haven't really visited my Spanish teacher for about, I don't know, like three months because I have to act as my English teacher. And so you have like this weird mish-mash where, where do you see this is learning works, but something's off. Speaker 1: 11:37 That was student Frank Grant, a school board, vice president, Richard Berrera and parent Ashley Lewis speaking with KPBS producer, Pat Finn community conversations is a partnership of KPBS and the national conflict resolution center. This program is made possible by radius children's hospital, auxiliary and California state university, San Marcos Speaker 5: 12:03 [inaudible].