Learning something new
Brooklyn teachers, parents adjust to remote classes
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.
“It’s a new reality for the 1.1
million students and families in
New York City,” said Mayor Bill
de Blasio. “We are literally fl ying
the plane as we’re building
the plane. So, not everything is
going to go 100 percent as plan,
but that’s okay because we’ll
fi gure it out together.”
While parents prepped
their homes for learning, public
school teachers had just
three days of training before
taking 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
2021 BE STO F B K . C O M
COURIER L 12 IFE, APRIL 3-9, 2020
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.”
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 de Blasio predicted
would last through the
end of the school year, would
cause some students to get behind
on their 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 behind,” Caggiano
said.
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.
“We did sign up for a remote
device and we have not gotten
it. On Monday, they told us they
are still waiting on the devices,”
said Shaquana Boykin, who is
the guardian of a student enrolled
at Brooklyn Community
Arts and Media High School.
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,” 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.
“Every day of education
matters. We know that students
who are homeless, and students
in foster care have worse educational
outcomes than their
peers — they are already less
likely to be profi cient in reading,
and more likely to drop out
of school,” said Randi Levine, a
policy director with Advocates
for Children of New York. “So,
we do worry that any further
gap in their education is going
to set them further behind.”
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