41
ultimately ended online learning after five days. In
an email to parents, she cited the inequities it had
highlighted, in areas from special-education services
to childcare to Internet access.
Other districts have raised s imilar concerns, ques-
tioning whether remote learning violates civil rights
laws related to educating children with d isabilities,
who might struggle to use online tools o r n eed more
help t han a p arent can provide. But in guidance is-
sued March 21, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
said those concerns should not stop schools from of-
fe ring distance learning during “this time of unprec-
edented national emergency.”
Jessica King, a single mother of two in Chicago,
where schools are closed until April 21, s ays the dis-
parities will worsen the disadvantages already facing
low-income students, whose K-12 opportunities can
help or drastically hinder their chances of going on to
college. Making just $15 an hour as a teaching a ssis-
tant i n a Catholic school, King does not have a h ome
computer and cannot afford Internet to access the
optional o nline a ssignments recommended for her
6-year-old son, who has ADHD and a behavioral dis-
order. “We already deal with the achievement gap,”
she says. “But now it’s just like it’s going to widen.”
The problem is not confined to K-12 schools. Hun-
dreds of colleges have transitioned to online learningeven though not all students have easy access to wi-fi
off campus.
Delaney Anderson, a sophomore at the University
of Minnesota, Morris, is one of them. The university
has asked students to move out of dorms and stay
off c ampus unless they don’t have a safe place t o go,
but wi-fi at home on the Fond du Lac reservation is
spotty at best. “It’s difficult to play a YouTube video,”
Anderson says, “let alone a lecture.”
As they wrestle with remote-learning challenges,
many teachers say they’re trying to continue stu-
dents’ e ducations a nd p rovide a sense of normality,
while recognizing t he n ew hurdles c hildren could be
facing beyond school—whether their parents were
laid off, their younger siblings now need babysitters,
or their relatives have contracted the virus.
On her first day teaching remotely in New York
City, Paz says her priority was checking i n with stu-
dents, who seemed overwhelmed, before bombard-
ing them with new learning material. She took atten-
dance, s hared a video welcoming students to online
learning and asked them to complete a journal entry
on how they were feeling about their new normal.
“We have to be flexible,” Paz says. “We have to re-
member that our students are human beings i n t he
midst of a global crisis. And the same way that it’s
stressing us out, it’s stressing them out.” □^
Roye, a school
principal, and
sons Mosijah and
Iyeoshujah on
day one of re mote
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