Education Week - February 23, 2022 - 19

doing a good job.
" Parents have a default position of
trusting educators to do what's right
for their children, " said Kevin Walker,
the president of Project Appleseed,
a national advocacy group for public
school families.
But there are a lot of factors this
year that may make it difficult for
parents to support teachers as much
as teachers want, experts note. Many
parents, especially those who have
children too young to be vaccinated,
are stretched thin with a lack of consistent
child care due to quarantines.
Others have experienced economic
setbacks due to the pandemic and
may be working longer hours. And
some may have lost a spouse or family
member due to COVID-19 and are
still grieving.
" I don't think it has anything to do
with the fact that parents don't want
to give the support, " said Buttimer,
the MIT researcher.
Also, many school districts are
still not allowing parents to come
onto campus in an effort to limit the
spread of COVID-19. That has left
some parents feeling unsure how to
be involved in their child's education.
It has also taken away real-time supports
for teachers and the relationships
that formed from those face-toface
interactions.
Liz Crandall, a 3rd grade teacher
at La Center Elementary School in
Washington state, said parents used
to frequently volunteer in classrooms
before the pandemic. " They supported
us that way a lot, and they can't
do that now, " she said. " I think they
feel as if their hands are tied. "
Walker said administrators should
find ways for parents to volunteer and
engage with their child's school from
a distance. He added that teachers
should try to communicate with parents
in a way that meets them where
they are-for example, texts instead
of emails.
After all, Crandall said, parents still
want to support her efforts to keep
students on track academically, even
from a distance. " I think the community
in general is recognizing that
teachers are really doing the best we
can, " she said.
A Tenuous Balance: Supporting Students
While Pushing Their Learning Recovery
By Ileana Najarro
At C.W. Ruckel Middle School in
Niceville, Fla., so many kids were
using their cell phones in class-a violation
of the school's rules-that administrators
loosened up their policy
of confiscating them. It had become
impractical to enforce. Students had
become heavily dependent on devices
to help find answers quickly-a side
effect of months of remote learning-
and were expressing frustration when
they had to wrestle with a question
or problem on their own, said Steve
Chambers, a social studies teacher.
In a New York high school, one
teacher has students who stressed out
over their parents losing jobs. And at
another school, teachers must help
their older students re-learn classroom
rules.
The individual anecdotes of frustration,
stress, distraction, and anxiety
students are experiencing this school
year add up to a large, complicated
reality of social-emotional and mental
health needs that teachers must
acknowledge and help address-at
the same time that they must move
children forward academically. It's a
difficult balance to strike.
" At the end of the day, if kids are
dealing with mental health issues or
families' basic needs being met, that
is going to hinder and has continued to
hinder growth in the academic areas,
and in academic skills, " said Katrina
Miles, an English and drama teacher at
Temecula Middle School in Temecula,
Calif.
Getting students interested and
excited about learning-a challenge
that predates the pandemic-is harder
than ever, according to a December
EdWeek Research Center survey of
630 teachers across the country. Low
student engagement is the most widespread
problem teachers pointed to as
an impediment to helping students
reach grade level, with 68 percent of
respondents citing it. Large percentages
of teachers cited four other major
barriers as well: behavioral problems
(59 percent), student quarantines
(55 percent), and student mental
health needs (54 percent).
Teachers, counselors, and district
leaders alike acknowledge that a lot
of these challenges existed prior to the
pandemic's start. But moving between
remote, hybrid, and in-person learning
and adjusting to frequently changing
COVID-19 protocols, have intensified
and affected more students. While
some educators have found ways to
navigate the balancing act, they also
recognize it won't be an easy journey.
" We're still in a pandemic, " said
Stephanie Andrews, executive director
of student and family support
services for the Tulsa public schools.
" This is not going to be a fast fix. "
Old challenges worsen
At C.W. Ruckel Middle, the front
office had been filling up every day
with too many students waiting to
pick up their confiscated phones, said
Chambers. The principal, in a faculty
meeting last fall, told teachers to stop
taking phones away.
Though Chambers had seen students
get more frustrated at not
being able to use phones to help them
with schoolwork, he now worries
about building up his 8th graders'
drive to formulate answers rather
than regurgitate them as they prepare
for high school. The endurance
kids need to complete their work has
eroded in a larger number of students,
he said.
" You just have to continue pushing
along and teaching the kids and taking
the kids from where they are to
where they need to be, " he said. " It's
difficult sometimes, because the kids
want to quit on you. "
Julie Capossere, an English teacher
at Brighton High School in Rochester,
N.Y., said more of her students
are going to see counselors.
Students are experiencing stress
at home, stress from all the political
turmoil they're witnessing, stress
from the fear of getting sick or their
parents getting sick, and initially they
lacked the daily in-person structure
of school where they knew what to
expect and where to be, she said.
And in Tulsa, Andrews said teachers
and school staff had to re-teach
behavioral expectations in middle
and high school students, something
that hadn't been necessary before.
Traditional things like classroom
procedures and how to go in and out
of the cafeteria had to be reset as a
result of the pandemic's disruption,
she said.
Yvonne Alexander, a science
teacher at Hopkins Junior High
School in Fremont, Calif., said her
students don't want to sit still in their
seats. " We've been locked in our
bedroom and we want to be with our
friends, they've told her. "
So she's let students move their
desks. They're welcome to step out
if needed to alleviate anxiety. She's
leading more classroom activities
where students work together.
" We want to be productive, " Alexander
said. " I have faith that humans
are resilient, but we have to give
them a space to be safely resilient in
and fall apart, literally just go ahead,
and let's just fall apart. "
Miles, the teacher in Temecula, has
seen how isolation during remote
learning impacted her 12-year-old
son. His confidence in his ability to
learn took a dip.
She was initially more lenient with
him as with her students in giving
the space and time needed to socialize
and get re-adjusted to in-person
learning. But now she's stepping up
to say, " I don't care about the grade,
but I do want your best. "
She's encouraging other parents to
join her. She calls her students' parents
after school and on weekends
to learn more about what challenges
they face outside of the classroom
and to let parents know what the students
need to do to stay on track or
catch-up and how she can help. She
frames school work as a positive distraction
from the stressors that are
out of her students' control.
Districts weigh in with strategies
In the Dallas Independent School
District, schools were able to choose
from three different calendars this
school year that would allow for
more time for instruction or professional
development, time for additional
academic support for students
and more, said Juany ValdespinoGaytan,
the district's executive director
of engagement services. The
district has hired more than 50 new
mental health clinicians for students
and required morning meetings and
advisory periods, along with providing
teachers with SEL lessons to use
during that time.
Tulsa public schools have wellness
teams in schools where a group of
teachers, counselors, and administrators
get together to figure out the
students who seem to be in greater
need for wellness, and determine
how best to support them, said Andrews.
In
the long run, there's no returning
to what schooling was like prior
to the pandemic, Andrews and others
said. Even now with sporadic school
closures, quarantines, and staff shortages,
schools are struggling to offer
consistency students need to progress
both academically and socially-emotionally,
Andrews said.
Her hope is that more educators
work toward imagining what a new
normal can look like that can benefit
students and teachers alike.
" I think that this is a year for us to
kind of be thinking about and dreaming
in different ways and designing
our lessons differently than we did in
the past, " Andrews said.
What, if any, challenges are currently making it much more difcult than usual to help your students reach grade
level/the level where they need to be? Select all that apply.
Problems with student engagement
Behavioral problems
Student quarantines
Students' mental health needs
Insufficient support from parents
Staff shortages
My own stress
Mismatch between student needs and our curriculum/instructional resources
Insufficient support from administrators
Teacher quarantines
Problems with educational technology
Shifting schedules
Other, please specify
School closures
No challenges are making it much more difficult
3%
EDUCATION WEEK | February 23, 2022 | www.edweek.org | 19
14%
6%
18%
17%
SOURCE: EdWeek
Research Center
33%
27%
22%
52%
51%
44%
68%
59%
55%
54%

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 23, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 23, 2022