’Heart-wrenching’: Rural Stanislaus district shares struggles of distance learning
“Enormous” and “heart-wrenching” learning loss. Continuing struggles with distance learning because of Internet connectivity, language barriers and other issues. The social development and mental health issues that come from isolation.
Approaching one year since schools closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Waterford educators and parents got a chance to share with their congressman this week these and other experiences, concerns and successes.
U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, whose district includes all of Stanislaus County, visited the Waterford Unified School District on Wednesday. He talked with administrators including Superintendent Don Davis and Assistant Superintendent Jose Aldaco, who’s also the city’s mayor, and then toured facilities.
With Aldaco translating, Spanish-speaking parents of English learners shared on a video conference call that helping children with distance learning has been extremely difficult, especially when there are sometimes up to three or four students in a home. Having them on campus a couple of days a week on a hybrid schedule has helped, one mother said, but it’s not been enough to catch up and be successful with their schoolwork.
Some families on the fringes of the district never have had reliable Internet, Davis and other administrators said. They outlined efforts made, with varying levels of success, to remedy the situation.
An agreement the state made with T-Mobile, for instance, was expensive and didn’t work. “We got an initial shipment of 10 (hot spot) units,” said Carolyn Viss, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction. “Two of them didn’t work out of the box. The other eight would show they were connected” but never produced a WiFi signal. “And this is while school is in session, so our kids are actively missing out on learning.”
Those devices were returned, and the district ended up buying about two dozen iPhones to give to families. They were locked down so that they couldn’t serve as cell phones, only as hot spots to make learning devices usable.
The district also explored using learning-loss mitigation funds to put up a cell tower, but that “didn’t pencil out” financially and technologically, Davis said.
Viss said there still remain students living in remote areas who can’t connect from home. “A hot spot works where you have cell service. If you don’t have cell phone service where you live, a hot spot does nothing for you.”
The district has hot spots in a parking lot and library, but it’s difficult for some families to bring their children to those sites, Davis said. A downtown church also has tables outside and graciously allows students to use its network, but that, too, doesn’t easily work for families with other children at home who need to be supervised, Viss said.
Students are suffering, principal says
Lack of Internet is just one type of connection problem. Another huge one is that many students aren’t feeling connected to school while doing only distance learning, as is happening in the secondary grades.
Davis said he talked with a number of Waterford High upperclassmen last week. He heard their concerns about freshmen not getting to meet their teachers, getting to know upperclassmen and in general getting the social development that comes with being on a high school campus.
“One student said this to me, and I’ll never forget, he said, ‘Distance learning is like living the same week over and over and over again,’ ” the superintendent said.
Waterford High Principal Peggy Herndon agreed that students are suffering — especially freshmen and sophomores. “We’ve never really connected with” the freshman class, she told Harder.
She had a freshman orientation in October, that included a campus tour. About 60% of the students attended, Herndon said, “and I think those are the kids that actually wanted to be here and really wanted to learn.
“And so the ones that didn’t — and we have a handful of them — boy, it’s just been like pulling teeth. But we’re not giving up. You know, every child matters. So we just do what we’ve got to do to get them here.”
That includes constant calls to parents, asking for their help in getting kids to attend their distance learning. Too many kids are “drive-by” students, signing in so they count as attending, but then tuning out, Davis said.
The cost of learning loss
There are some students physically on the Waterford High campus, Herndon told the congressman. They include all of the special-ed students “because they just can’t do it at home.”
There’s also a cohort of the regular-ed students who are most struggling with being able to do schoolwork at home, she said. And for students who’ve failed courses, there are three credit-recovery classes: one for juniors and seniors, one for sophomores and one for freshmen.
“High school counts from Day One,” Davis said, so credit recovery is a huge issue. “If we’re going to get these kids actually to a diploma in four years, what’s the strategy for making up the classes that were failed?” he asked rhetorically as he spoke with Herndon and Harder. “The teachers are having to rethink how they grade, rethink how they present content. And understand, some kids are really, really trying. And it’s not that they don’t care, but they’re fish out of water.”
Speaking of students in general, the superintendent said it will take several years of work to recover from learning loss.
Harder called the situation heart-wrenching and said, “When you think about the cost of a year of learning loss ... it’s gonna be enormous, it’s gonna follow kids” the rest of their education, and in some cases well beyond that.
While agreeing that learning loss is the biggest issue facing educators, Herndon added that she believes things eventually will be OK. “Because we’re going to work hard. We’re going to have a really good summer school this summer. And hopefully, once we get the kids back (on campus), which we’re hoping is in March, that’s going to be a huge positive.”
Adapting special education
Harder’s visit was on a Wednesday, when all students on the regular-ed hybrid learning model study remotely. But he did get to visit the district’s Gateway to Success Adult Transition Program classroom.
There, the students who are able to attend in person are actually spending more time in the classroom than usual. Pre-pandemic, the students were out developing life skills by doing things like folding delivery boxes for some local pizza places, shopping at grocery stores and Target, said teacher Jamie Cortes.
In the confines of the classroom or their homes, they’re trying different things. Wednesday, students were helping build stationary bikes to work out on since their regular trips to a gym can’t happen, Cortes said.
Activity bags are made for those students who can’t come in person, she said. “It’s rough because a lot of my students don’t have the functional level to try to do many things independently, and I don’t want to have to have parents sit there and do it with them.”
As an example, she said instant-noodle cups were sent home, along with instructions to watch a video on how to prepare them, Cortes told the congressman. Students also are given daily check-off lists to do things like brushing their teeth and doing laundry.
Interviewed after his tour, Harder said he’s been impressed by teachers who are having to work in ways they never have before. Of Cortes making YouTube videos that show her students how to manage basic household tasks, he said, “That’s incredible, that’s really so innovative, so creative. And I just think about the stories of all the teachers that are just doing the impossible and have been doing it for a year.”
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 2:47 PM.
