Education Week - March 30, 2022 - 18

The problems didn't stop when the
calendar flipped to 2021. Scotch PlainsFanwood
finally brought middle
and high school students back into
school buildings on January 19.
That same day, the district was hit
with a cyberattack that shut down
its computer network and caused
schools to close for a day.
petitions to an in-person rally outside
the local middle school.
" Most of us chose hybrid. That
choice was taken away from us, "
one local mom told local news outlet
TAPintoSPF.
Saanvi's parents struggled to understand
the anger.
" I can't speak for other people, "
Rema Suresh said. " But what I saw
was teachers going above and beyond
to keep students engaged. "
Still, by October 2020, the district
had lost nearly 200 students. The
district brought its youngest children
back on a hybrid schedule, then
quickly had to shut back down when
15 students and staff members tested
positive for COVID-19 , causing 84
people to be placed into quarantine.
Once again, the superintendent
was scrambling, this time to cover
teacher-less classrooms and coordinate
the schedules of staff members
who lived in neighboring communities
dealing with shutdowns and
quarantines of their own.
" The problem became more complex, "
Mast said. " Not only was it
more complexity in our system, but
the interconnectivity with other local
systems. "
By that point, however, some local
residents were no longer willing to
extend the district any grace. On
December 23, 2020, parents filed
a lawsuit seeking to force Scotch
Plains-Fanwood schools to reopen
for in-person learning.
" We have lost all trust in Dr. Mast
and the Board of Education, " parent
and plaintiff Danielle Wildstein told
TAPintoSPF. " We want to preserve
what's left of the school year. "
Change, mounting exhaustion,
and federal lifelines
Teacher Lauren DeNicola was one
of thousands caught in the verbal and
legal crossfire.
She lived in nearby Sayreville, N.J.,
just a mile from her childhood home,
which her mom was terrified to leave
because she suffered from an autoimmune
condition. DeNicola also had a
3rd grader and preschooler of her own,
both of whom demanded constant attention
to make it through their own
half-days of remote schooling.
" It was an emotional rollercoaster, "
she said.
Still, DeNicola was a teacher at
heart. After concluding that things
weren't going back to normal anytime
soon, she spent the summer of
2020 taking an online course on remote
teaching offered by an Australian
university. She also spent hours
in virtual professional-development
sessions hosted by the Michigan Association
of Biology Teachers and
taking part in long discussions in a
Facebook group for biology teachers.
" My personality is that I like to go
into things very prepared, " she said.
She wasn't alone. Teachers at Park
Middle School arranged for remote
students like Saanvi to do backyard
photography shoots and virtual
lab experiments on kinetic energy.
They even created a new club called
Enchanted Engineering. Saanvi
sketched out designs for a flying hotair
umbrella, then used her new invention
as a literary device to rewrite
the ending of her favorite fairy tale.
" Cinderella longed to go back
home, so she ran down the steps
and reached for her umbrella, " she
wrote. " The prince wondered who
this maiden was and watched her
walk-no...FLY off with her umbrella
into the midnight sky. "
For all the bright spots, however,
the burden of constant uncertainty
kept growing heavier. The EdWeek
Research Center found that thousands
of districts were implementing
a hodgepodge of remote and hybrid
instructional models, many of which
shifted from week to week throughout
the 2020-21 school year.
The country also seemed to be
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18 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 30, 2022 | www.edweek.org
splintering. Debates raged over
whether to force teachers to work
from their classrooms and students
to turn on their laptop cameras and
everyone to wear masks in school
buildings.
All the while, instruction kept suffering.
Eighty-six percent of educators
told the EdWeek Research Center
they were relying more heavily on
software as a primary teaching tool.
Eighty percent reported lower student
engagement. Sixty-nine percent
reported ongoing challenges with unreliable
student Wi-Fi. Sixty percent
said they were doing less small group
and one-on-one teaching.
The problems didn't stop when
the calendar flipped to 2021. Scotch
Plains-Fanwood finally brought middle
and high school students back
into school buildings on January 19.
That same day, the district was hit
with a cyberattack that shut down
its computer network and caused
schools to close for a day.
Amid the chaos, DeNicola prepared
to teach the Waterville simulation for
a second time. The logistical and technical
challenges had multiplied by
several orders of magnitude.
74% of survey respondents
approved President Biden's
call to get all schools back
to full-time in-person learning
within 100 days.
EdWeek Research Center Survey, Jan. 2021
Some of her students were still
learning entirely from home.
DeNicola had to stand behind her
desk for entire 77-minute periods
to make sure they could see her on
their computer screens. The kids
in her classroom, meanwhile, sat
surrounded by clear shields. They
couldn't share pencils or lab equipment,
and they struggled to stay
six feet apart because the lab tables
were fixed in place. Even the 3,350
new iPads distributed by the district
were a source of confusion. Many of
DeNicola's students were still using
their personal laptops, creating a
crazy technological stew for teachers
to navigate.
When the lesson began, a significant
chunk of the class was just
silent black squares on DeNicola's
computer screen. The enthusiastic
chatter from the year before was just
a memory. Students clicked " run "
expecting to see an animation that
showed the Waterville ecosystem
evolving over time, allowing them to
track changes in the number of algae,
minnows, and smallmouth bass living
in the pond as its oxygen levels
fluctuated. Instead, a glitch caused
an image of a giant blue fish to take
over the screens of those using iPads.
" The whole idea of complex systems
really hit me differently, "
DeNicola said.
Mercifully, though, lifelines soon
began to arrive. Congress allocated
more than $190 billion to the Elementary
and Secondary School
Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund,
helping schools pay for tutors and
cleaning supplies and millions of
computing devices. The $1.8 million
that came to Scotch Plains-Fanwood
schools was quickly plowed into
mental health supports, technology
training, and a massive contact-tracing
effort.
New vaccines also raised the nation's
spirits. By early April 2021, twothirds
of teachers and administrators
told the EdWeek Research Center
they'd been fully vaccinated against
COVID-19. By the end of the month,
that figure had shot up to 80 percent.
Still, life in America's schools was
hardly back to normal. Nationally, 92
percent of teachers said their job was
more stressful than pre-pandemic. In
New Jersey, 534 of the state's 811 public
school districts were still doing hybrid
learning. At Scotch Plains-Fanwood
High, Principal Heisey fought
off despair as he watched masked
teenagers march silently in singlefile
lines down the school's one-way
hallways, unsure how to connect
with their friends in the somber new
environment.
" We didn't even serve lunch, " the
principal said.
Saanvi Suresh was among those
who elected to keep learning from
home. From her bedroom, she
helped convince the Scotch PlainsFanwood
STEAM Club to restart its
Junior Solar Sprint program. She also
used a Raspberry Pi microcontroller,
an ultrasonic distance sensor, and
computer code to create a musical
instrument called a theremin, recording
herself playing a haunting
orchestra by waving her hands in
front of the device.
" I realized how everything had to
work together for the circuit to function
seamlessly, " Saanvi wrote in a
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Education Week - March 30, 2022

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