Education in the Time of COVID-19, from a Teacher in the South Bronx
Edited by Rose Perry, Ph.D. & Stephen Braren
Education in the time of COVID-19, from a teacher in the South Bronx | On March 16, public schools in New York City switched to remote learning. This move followed school districts across the state and country closing in response to the spread of COVID-19. In New York City in particular, school closures have shed a harsh light on and exacerbated existing inequalities between students of different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. With the recent focus on city budgets and calls to reallocate funds from law enforcement to youth programs and education, we wanted to get the perspective of educators at the forefront of these two crises: COVID-19 and education for low-income communities in New York City. To gain some insight into the challenges currently being faced by educators and students, I interviewed Emily Dentinger, a teacher at a charter high school in the South Bronx. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
SV: Can you tell me a little about your school and what you teach?
ED: I teach English as a New Language [ENL: formerly known as ESL] at a high school in the South Bronx. My purpose in the school is to work with English language learners [ELLs] in helping them build academic language. I do that through standalone ENL classes, and I co-teach in content area classes to support ELLs. The socioeconomic status of my students is fairly low, and most of my ELL students are from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and several other countries in West Africa and South America. Out of the 460+ students in our school, approximately 18% of them are classified as ELLs.
SV: Can you tell me about the transition to online teaching?
ED: Our school shut down on March 13, and we started online learning on March 16. The transition was really sudden. We were told on March 10 to think of some packet instruction to turn in the following week in case the school was shut down, and then on March 13 we were suddenly given two hours to get our packets together for one to two weeks of instruction. For the first week of online learning, we held two 30-minute office hour sessions per day over Zoom where students could join for help with assignments. It was during that time that we started thinking about ways to send students computers to complete assignments and attend class. We then started regular Zoom classes. I teach Zoom classes twice a week for 30 minutes now. I used to see my students for 65 minutes every day in person.
SV: How have your relationships with your students changed now that you see them less?
ED: It has become increasingly more challenging to figure out what my students need now that I spend so much less time with them. For example, my feedback needs to be a lot more delicate. It needs to be enough to help them figure out how to improve their work, but not too much to overwhelm or discourage them, since I am not right there with them to help guide their work. I need to pick and choose the most important things to give students feedback on and accept what I can and cannot do for them.
SV: That seems really challenging. What changes have you noticed in your students in this transition?
ED: Lower attendance. A lot of them have more challenging home situations or multiple siblings with whom they share laptops. So if they have a sibling using the laptop to attend class, they cannot attend class. On top of that, we’re asking them to dive into college-level time management skills. When we’re in person, we can help manage their time for them, but now that we’re not there in person they are thrown into managing their own time, working jobs, and caring for siblings.
SV: Would you say that access to technology has been a big hurdle for your students?
ED: Absolutely. My students are digital natives, but that’s really only on cell phones. Even in person, our students have really struggled to effectively use computers. Many students don’t know how to effectively write an email, or they don’t always know how to upload assignments. We also started by prioritizing getting computers to seniors who needed credits or the Regents [statewide standardized exam] to graduate. I have three juniors who, despite being so far into quarantine, are still doing assignments on their phones because they don’t have computers. Our school is exempting students from assignments from before they got computers, but that’s a lot of work for them to miss.
SV: What do you wish you could do for your students right now?
ED: On one hand, I feel like some of my students have no motivation right now and don’t know the long-term implications of what this could mean. We’ve made grading policy adjustments, but this is still an opportunity for academic and personal growth and I really want my students to be able to take advantage of that. On the flipside, I want my students to feel like they’re not alone in this and I want them to feel like a part of a community. In my ENL class, we’ve shifted to have our class building conversation skills rather than academic skills. When we made that shift, I definitely noticed a change where my students really do feel like we’re a community.
SV: From your perspective, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing you and your students right now?
ED: I feel like there’s this crazy pressure on us as educators to build the future generation, but at the same time not to overwhelm them during this pandemic. I’m very overwhelmed by trying to balance what’s expected of me by school administration, students, parents, and my own personal teaching philosophy. The students I work with are already an underserved population, especially now. I’m worried that if I take away any more schooling by reducing the workload or class time that I'll be only furthering those disadvantages compared to students who are advantaged during this time. It’s really challenging to find the right balance.
SV: Given recent discussions around allocating more resources in the city budget to schools and youth programs, do you feel like there is a specific area where more funding would be a game changer for you and your students?
ED: This is kind of tricky for me to answer because I’m at a charter school. We definitely aren’t overflowing with cash and I still struggle to get basic resources like chart paper and markers, but that’s more for lack of school organization as opposed to lack of money. If anything, it’s not more monetary resources I need in a charter. It’s more space and smaller class sizes that we need. I can’t effectively teach 30+ students in one small classroom when eight of the students have an Individualized Education Plan [IEP], three of them are an ELL, five more are an ELL with an IEP, three are gifted, and four are chronically absent. It’s just not possible to meet all the learning needs when you have that many students, even in a co-taught model. The co-teaching model many schools stress is parallel teaching. This means the students are broken into smaller groups based on learning needs and each group gets a teacher to deliver more differentiated instruction. In theory, this is exactly what our students need so they can work with different teachers and students daily based on their learning needs, but still be in an integrated setting. In reality, our classrooms are way too small and way too loud for this to happen. I have so many instructional strategies I’d love to implement but can’t because of classroom constraints. Students will never reach their full potential as learners when they’re jammed into an overcrowded classroom. We need more teachers, not less. More space, not less.
Take action!
For readers compelled by Emily’s experiences and the needs of educators and students alike, make your voice heard by contacting your local elected officials and advocating for more funding for education and youth programs rather than law enforcement. Here is a link to a document with phone, email, and tweet scripts that you can customize for your city’s needs, as well as the contact information for every member of the City Council for New York City.