A24 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020
“Way to go, Zalaunshae,” said
the teacher, Fatima Jallow. “Let’s
all send her some energy.”
The half-dozen second-graders
in the reading group reached out
their arms and wiggled their fin-
gers to send their classmate good
vibes.
The stakes are high for Zalaun-
shae Pearson and her classmates
at Achievement Prep public char-
ter school’s elementary campus in
Southeast Washington.
Studies link third-grade read-
ing levels to graduation rates.
Students are at least four times as
likely to not graduate from high
school on time if they are not
proficient readers by the time
they complete third grade, ac-
cording to a 2011 study published
by the Annie E. Casey Founda-
tion, an organization focused on
child welfare. The rate doubles
for Black and Hispanic children.
In March, around 90 percent of
the school’s first-graders hit their
reading targets, according to in-
ternal assessments. Then when
the pandemic hit and schools
abruptly closed, teachers sent the
children home with academic
packets. The school remained
closed, and the packets kept com-
ing. The first-graders became sec-
ond-graders. The 6-year-olds be-
came 7-year-olds.
This fall, individual reading
assessments administered in per-
son highlighted the cost of trying
to learn during the pandemic. All
45 second-graders fell behind.
Not a single student started the
academic year reading on grade
level. It was far worse than a
typical summer learning drop.
Some were reading at an early
first-grade level, others at a kin-
dergarten level.
Zalaunshae fared better than
most. She didn’t lose any of her
literacy skills compared with in
the spring. But during the spring
and summer she didn’t gain any,
either. That meant that she start-
ed second grade six months be-
hind.
She and her classmates are
expected to be proficient readers
in third grade, when they will
start taking high-stakes stan-
dardized exams. That is also
when early literacy lessons stop
and more-advanced social stud-
ies and science courses that as-
sume students know how to read
begin.
The consequences of months of
schooling lost to the pandemic —
a spring when remote learning
was spotty and a summer out of
school — could last far beyond
this academic year.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)
has pointed to literacy loss among
the D.C. public school system’s
youngest learners to underscore
why schools urgently need to re-
READING FROM A1 open. Black and Latino students
are falling further behind, she
warned in October. The achieve-
ment gap is growing.
The 183 students in kindergar-
ten through third grade at
Achievement Prep are among the
children that education leaders
fear will fare the worst from
prolonged school closures. Nine-
ty-seven percent are Black. Near-
ly 70 percent are from families
that qualify for public assistance.
Thirteen percent are homeless.
The students already fell on the
wrong side of the achievement
gap, performing well below city
averages on standardized exams.
“Education being used as path-
way — that’s always been the way
for our people,” said Shantelle
Wright, founder of Achievement
Prep, who is Black. “To have that
be compromised and have it be so
out of their control, it’s scary.”
Jallow and Wright understand
what is at stake for these children
if they do not learn to read. The
school is completely online this
fall, with a curriculum that gives
Zalaunshae and her classmates
three to four hours of live virtual
learning each day and structured
independent work in between.
But teaching virtually makes it
hard to connect with students.
Sometimes Jallow’s students try
to answer questions, but their
Internet lags and they can’t
speak. To keep the class moving,
she has to call on someone else
while the student sits frozen. Her
students — or scholars, as she
refers to them — often experience
online-learning fatigue, drifting
to a YouTube music video before
their reading lessons end. She is
putting more hours into teaching
each week than ever before.
“It takes a certain level of pa-
tience and understanding to get
through it,” said Jallow, 24, a
first-year teacher at Achievement
Prep and a second-year fellow
with Urban Teachers, a program
that provides training for teach-
ers across the country. “I never
thought I could do it. It is help-
ing me to take it day by day.”
Zalaunshae’s mother, Kathy
Lloyd, also understands the
stakes. She is the woman behind
Zalaunshae’s perfect attendance
during the pandemic, and she is
determined to put as many books
as she can in front of her daugh-
ter.
‘She flew into my life’
Lloyd scours Little Free Librar-
ies for children’s books. She also
grabs the free books available at
the nearby hospital, which she
visits frequently for her leg and
back injuries.
Her daughter’s favorite? “Just
Grace and the Snack Attack,” a
pink hardcover Lloyd picked up
at a doctor’s appointment. “It’s a
chapter book about snacks,”Zalaunshae said, laughing as she
flipped through the pages.
“I’m not even sure I know what
a chapter book is,” Lloyd said.
Zalaunshae explained that it is
a book for older children with few
pictures.
“She’s teaching me,” Lloyd said,
impressed by her child.
Lloyd has always tried to pro-
vide her daughter with a stable
life and a strong education. She
just never thought school build-
ings would close for more than
eight months and her daughter
would be getting an education
from their subsidized apartment
unit in Southeast Washington.
“I want more for her than what
I had,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t get an
education, so that’s something
that I don’t play with.”
Lloyd, 59, dropped out of high
school more than 40 years ago in
Northeast Washington. She wit-
nessed her father kill her mother
when she was a young girl, forc-
ing her to grow up and work
before she could earn a diploma.
She spent her adult life work-ing at coffee shops and other
service jobs until a back injury
pulled her out of the workforce
more than a decade ago.
Six years ago, a friend of Lloyd’s
knew of a baby who needed a
home. Lloyd said she would raise
the child, and just like that
Zalaunshae became her whole
life.
“I call her my butterfly,” she
said, “because she flew into my
life, and I’m never going to let her
fly out.”
Lloyd always tells Zalaunshae
to “dream big,” reminding her
that an education is the way to
achieve those dreams.
“I want to be a dancer,” Zalaun-
shae said after a school day in
October, shimmying in sparkly
pink shoes in front of her apart-
ment building.
“Come on, Zalaunshae,” Lloyd
said, prodding her daughter to
share the full scope of her ambi-
tions. “You’ve also been telling
everyone since you’ve been 4 that
you want to be a judge, lawyer
and police officer.”Every evening, Lloyd irons a
clean polo shirt with Achieve-
ment Prep’s logo for Zalaunshae
to wear during virtual school. The
school doesn’t require it, but she
thinks it helps her daughter fo-
cus.
Lloyd moved Zalaunshae’s
books from her bedroom to the
dining table, where she partici-
pates in virtual school, so she can
be surrounded by books when she
learns. She posts a handwritten
sign on her apartment door re-
minding the teenagers whose
voices echo in the hallways:
“SCHOOL IN PROGRESS HERE.”
“I do it every day so she feels
like she’s going to school,” Lloyd
said. “And it makes me feel better,
too.”
On the other side of the screen,
Jallow is also trying to create
something like the classroom ex-
perience.Re-creating the classroom
Jallow reports each day to her
empty classroom, equipped with
a large television screen that al-
lows her to see each student’s face
without scrolling. A camera
tracks her as she moves, so she
can amble around as she would
during a normal lesson.
A typical English class begins
with students reading passages
aloud from a book. Students are
grouped in classes by reading
level. Zalaunshae is in the highest
group, and Jallow pushed that
group to relate the stories to their
own lives.
“We don’t read like robots,”
Jallow reminded them. “So we
read with expression, so people
can understand us.”
During the pandemic, attend-
ance has dropped and the gap
between her students’ reading
abilities has widened. Before
schools closed, more than 90 per-
cent of students reported to
school on a given day, school
leaders said. In the first weeks of
fall, that dropped to around
70 percent. It’s now up to more
than 80 percent. The school
makes daily phone calls to absent
students and frequent home vis-
its — one week last month, school
representatives showed up at the
residences of 14 students who
were truant or needed help with
virtual learning.
Students, including Zalaun-
shae, are making more progress
than they did in the spring.
But Jallow is certain they
would be doing much better if
they were in person. In school,
she can create an equitable learn-
ing environment, but she can’t do
that when every child is at home
with wildly differing learning sit-
uations.
Zalaunshae is an only child
with a mother who can log her in
each day. Others are at home with
multiple siblings and less super-vision, or with too many distrac-
tions to properly focus.
Jallow has struggled to create
lesson plans that meet the needs
of all her students, even in small
group classes.
“I’m putting you all in your
breakout rooms,” Jallow an-
nounced to the class, going to her
laptop to put students in separate
Zoom classrooms.
Students were directed to con-
tinue to read the book by them-
selves in these rooms. This is the
time when, if students were in a
classroom, Jallow would visit
each of their desks to see whether
they needed any help.
Instead, she dropped by each of
their Zoom rooms. A computer
program allows Jallow to see
what page each student is on, so if
a student is spending too long on
a page, she can ask whether they
need assistance.
When Zalaunshae arrived in
her private room, she sped
through the pages in the book,
imitating a Southern accent as
she read about the turnip farmer.
Zalaunshae is a fast reader, but
she sometimes glosses over key
words and reads others incorrect-
ly.
“Do you remember what hap-
pens if there is an ‘s’ after ‘mis-
ter’?” Jallow asked Zalaunshae
when she entered her digital
room and noticed she made a
mistake.
“Yes,” Zalaunshae said, slowly
sounding “Mrs.” out and correct-
ing herself.
There are some aspects of class
that Jallow just can’t re-create.
Students are reading digital cop-
ies of a book, never holding physi-
cal books during class. She knows
the sense of accomplishment sec-
ond-graders feel when they turn
that last page of a book and hopes
these virtual lessons don’t dis-
suade children from reading.
School leaders say confidence
is also dropping. Students are
frustrated with online learning
and are struggling to keep up.
Achievement Prep is creating in-
dividual plans to help each stu-
dent. Now, Jallow spends more
time giving praise to her students.
A child struggling with reading
simple words now receives shout-
outs during classes when they
successfully read sentences.
Zalaunshae gets a shout-out
when she reads complete books
with few mistakes.
Every day during class, Jallow
pauses the readings and puts on a
YouTube music video for a dance
break. Each time, Zalaunshae,
with the confidence of a 7-year-
old, stands up and steps away so
her laptop camera captures more
than just her face. She shakes her
head left and right, flapping her
arms up and down, and dances
with her classmates.
[email protected]In first grade, 90% hit reading target. In second, none did.
Zalaunshae Pearson is a 7-year-old second-grader at Achievement
Prep. Individual assessments administered after the current school
year began showed that all the students in her class had fallen
behind in reading. It was far worse than a typical summer learning
drop, highlighting the cost of trying to teach during the pandemic.Zalaunshae’s mother, Kathy Lloyd, moved Zalaunshae’s books from
her bedroom to a spot close to where she does her virtual school, so
she can be surrounded by books when she learns. “I do it every day
so she feels like she’s going to school,” Lloyd said. She also posts a
sign on her apartment door: “SCHOOL IN PROGRESS HERE.”PHOTOS BY AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTFatima Jallow, a second-year fellow with the Urban Teachers training program, teaches second-grade virtually in October from her room at Achievement Prep public charter school in Southeast Washington.