On Disaster Distance Learning in New York City

By Jose Vilson | April 5, 2020

On Disaster Distance Learning in New York City

By Jose Vilson | April 5, 2020
Rainy Day on 34th and 9th Street, NYC

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The New York Times recently did a study on confirmed coronavirus cases across the city and found that COVID-19 cases are hitting lower-income neighborhoods the hardest. Some people have taken it to mean that we need to make more concerted efforts to keep these neighborhoods at home. (In some cases, by martial force.) Others have taken it as a sign of indifference as if the denizens of these specific neighborhoods had an opportunity to voice their opinions on this matter. Others still have taken to yelling at pictures of crowded subways and grocery stores as evidence that these neighborhoods simply can’t be bothered with the death toll that’s sure to disproportionately affect their own neighborhoods.

This isn’t all that different from the pre-COVID era, either. Our country should have created policies – and can still create policies – that protect our citizens most directly affected by environmental racism. Those who live closest to pollutants and congestion, those who live in or near asbestos-ridden buildings, those more likely to work the jobs that offend middle-to-upper class sensibilities need help now more than ever. These “essential jobs” are often occupied by the very people who our government has deemed dispensable in their squalor. Should these people not go to work, their bosses and their government will dispose of their ability to survive.

Oh, and the politicians who pundits currently praise created this problem by pretending like these disparities were just normal apparatuses of our dysfunctional economy. Overcrowded subways and substandard working conditions were perhaps normal, but neither just nor humane.

This only complicates my job as an educator who has lived and still lives in these lower-income neighborhoods. Parents who entrust me with their children’s education often work jobs dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn, and every schedule in between. They work jobs where they’re thankful for the midnight train. They may not always be able to keep up with the video conferencing sessions because they’re sleeping while we’re awake, awake while we’re asleep.

These essential workers still believe their child’s education essential too.

This element has made my job most stressful of all. The vast majority of us built what I’ve dubbed “disaster distance learning” from scraps. Calling it “remote learning,” “distance learning,” or “online learning” assumes a level of normalcy that doesn’t address the reason why we had to upend our educational processes in a week and a day. Educators, including me, can’t simply jeer at other adults who’ve started disaster homeschooling their children when so many parents – particularly parents of color – rely on and trust schools to provide their children with a great education. Our governor took away a week of respite from us in the service of flattening the curve. Our mayor then took another two days from us in the service of this. We’ve created a template for the dreams of technocrats who’ve flooded our e-mails with pitches for their tools.

Also, we couldn’t do disaster distance learning without the relationships we’ve established with our students and school communities. It’s not just a function of the “teacher,” but the dynamic that existed prior to this flip.

We taught ourselves how to use online tools and curricula, then taught ourselves how to teach others to use them. Preparing plans over a week mid-year isn’t just building a plane while flying it. It’s also changing the course of the plane and the materials with the plane still mid-flight. We went into school buildings for three days while there was still evidence that many of our colleagues contracted the virus. We made ourselves available all hours of the day, longer than the contractual obligations. We learned multiple online platforms at a time and developed professional development for one another on the spot. Once on these platforms, we’ve seen endless notifications and e-mails at all times of night, giving us a glimpse into our students’ lives without the compulsory structures of school.

During normal school operations, we went home still thinking about school. Now that we’re home doing disaster distance learning, being at school is just a matter of whether we have our devices on or not.

There’s a strong temptation on behalf of educators, especially those of us who know the urgency of a great education for our most under-resourced children, to replicate the operations of schooling without the building. We’re still giving a warm-up activity in the morning, still creating assignments as we would in class, try to make a mini-lesson either through videos or live sessions that we attend. There’s even a handful of us handing out strict rules of online engagement to emphasize a form of discipline and rigor through the Internet.

We already lost face-to-face contact with our students. Google Classrooms and YouTube videos often feel like teaching into a void when we don’t see immediate responses to our works. Until at least one student responds. Then we’re fine again. Kinda. It’s not the same. No, not at all.

That’s why it’s incumbent on educational leaders, politicians, and pundits alike to actively listen to the concerns most affected by the coronavirus. Make space for the listening. Everything has changed. Simple elements of our job have taken on a different meaning. I used to pride myself on teaming up with colleagues at school to call homes to give updates on our students’ educational progress. Now, we have added other considerations to keep in mind. We have children whose close relatives now have the virus and haven’t cleared quarantine. We have children who have to work double shifts or lose their apartments. We have children without shelter and would prefer their friends to not really explore the shame they’ve been placed under.

We have children who truly want to do their work, but, for a myriad of reasons, can’t. COVID-19 exacerbated this. Our responses to this pandemic exacerbated this. Environmental racism and capitalism exacerbated this.

There’s another curve we all need to explore as well, and that’s the disinterest curve. At some point, without the compulsory nature of going to school, can these bonds we’ve forged from September to March hold until June or will the interest wane as the weather gets warmer? Can students and their parents spend hours on hours of their day in front of screens waiting for the adult on the other side of that screen in the service of learning? Many elementary and middle school teachers, students, and parents used the standardized test as an anchor for why schooling mattered. Without a test, will “because I told you so” suffice? Who will some educators blame when the assignments become less interesting, more tedious, or just not aligned to the current energy?

A longitudinal study would need to be done in collaboration with epidemiologists and educational researchers on this effect, but I can understand if the results prove unsustainable over long periods of time. I do know we’re learning lots of different ways that our institutions have failed us. We’re one to two degrees of separation from someone who’ve contracted the virus, and, in short order, we’ll all be one to two degrees from someone who’s passed away from the virus.

Without a sense of urgency, we may let these lessons go to waste. Again.


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