
Brooklynites refl ect on remote learning
BY JESSICA PARKS
Brooklyn’s 300,000-plus
public school students started
remote learning this week,
marking an enormous shift in
the city’s education system —
and parents and teachers have
been working overtime to help
bring the classroom into students’
homes.
While parents prepped their
homes for learning, public
school teachers had just three
days of training before they
were required to take their
classrooms online on March
23 in an effort to promote social
distancing amid the novel
coronavirus outbreak — and,
while students may have enjoyed
a week-long hiatus from
class the week prior, vacation
is defi nitely over.
“We are holding the children
accountable. We are not
saying ‘you are off now, you
are on vacation,’” said Mario
Caggiano, a union chapter
leader and physical education
teacher at Coney Island’s
I.S. 303. “The children have to
check in by 9 am, so we know
they are online, they are engaged,
and they are learning.”
COURIER L 16 IFE, APRIL 3-9, 2020
Educators have taken up
technology like the video-conferencing
platform Zoom to
help teach students new material,
and online apps like
Google Classroom to assign
and grade work — despite the
rapid tectonic change, the new
system is working well, said
Caggiano.
“I am proud of all my teachers,
they are trying their best
to make it as close as possible
in an environment to the classroom,”
he said. “The response
from the kids has been great,
they want to learn and want to
do lessons.”
But while the system is
working as well as could be expected,
it’s not without fl aws.
Caggiano worried that the
prolonged out-of-classroom
experience, which Mayor Bill
de Blasio predicted would last
through the end of the school
year, would cause some students
to get behind on their
formative schooling.
“I am actually worried
that a lot of students will fall
through the cracks, and they
won’t get the education they
deserve and they will be very,
very behind,” Caggiano said,
“because they will not be doing
all the work, and not understanding
a lot of it.”
Some 300,000 students
in the New York City public
school system do not have an
internet connection at home
or a device to access the internet,
Schools Chancellor Richard
Carranza said on March
23, and even though the Department
of Education has issued
over 175,000 devices — including
both iPads and laptops
— in an effort to close the gap,
some students were still waiting
to receive their devices
days into the transition.
“We did sign up for a remote
device and we have not
gotten it,” said Shaquana
Boykin, who is the guardian
of a student enrolled at Brooklyn
Community Arts and Media
High School in Bedford-
Stuyvesant.
Without the device, the
high-schooler has had to
switch between her smartphone
and Boykin’s laptop —
which she also needs for work,
but teachers offered an improvised
option, Boykin said.
“If I am using the laptop,
and she can’t do the multiplechoice,
her teacher said she
could screenshot on her phone
and email it to them and they
could grade it that way,” she
said.
Education advocates lamented
that the current crisis
further emphasizes a need
for educational resources for
lower-equity students, who
may regularly lack things like
an internet connection, a laptop,
or even adult supervision.
“Unfortunately, the pandemic
reveals new challenges,
but to existing problems.
There is a realization that not
all children have the same
tools available to them,” said
Shelley Pasnik, the director
of the Center for Children and
Technology in Manhattan.
Missing classroom time or
being unable to complete assignments
will only further
the inequality of education for
these vulnerable students.
Pasnik suggested reaching
students through more
accessible and free networks
— such as broadcasting teachers
on a public media channel,
or having students tune in to
a lesson on the radio — which
would provide a helpful means
of information delivery, and
allow teachers to be sources of
comfort for students.
Students and teachers are adjusting to remote learning. Photo via Pexels