![]() ![]() “I feel fully confident in the education they’ll receive,” she said. While Cooper would prefer to be back on campus, Glynn believes that he and his siblings will be fine academically even with school continuing online. There were agendas and assignments online and Google hangouts with teachers, said his mother, Megan Glynn. His school shut down on a Friday, and by the following Wednesday it was up and running virtually. “She says she feels like she’s going to stay behind,” said her mother, Felicia Gonzalez, who has been battling COVID-19.Ĭooper, who attends school in the Las Virgenes Unified School District, where just 12% of students are from low-income families, had a district-issued computer and good internet access at home. Now, as school starts again online, she has told her mother she’s frustrated and worried. She did worksheets until June, when she at last received a computer, but struggled to understand the work. She didn’t have a computer, so she and her mother tried using a cellphone to access her online class, but the connection kept dropping, and they gave up after a week. Maria is a student in the Coachella Valley Unified School District, where 90% of the children are from low-income families. Cooper, 9, loved being with his friends and how his teacher incorporated the video game Minecraft into lessons.īut when their campuses shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic, their experiences diverged dramatically. Maria, 10, adored the special certificates she earned volunteering to read to second-graders. Does he think the experience of repeated lockdowns will have a lasting impact on his pupils? “Our job is to make sure it does not,” he said.Maria Viego and Cooper Glynn were thriving at their elementary schools. I’m one of the lucky ones.”īrown and his team worked hard to help pupils catch up last term, with extra English and maths tuition wrapped around the school day and on Saturdays for those in need. Likewise Hanae, 11, feels fortunate to have been in school for both lockdowns, first at primary and now at Urswick. “It’s good because you get to have a one-to-one with your teacher which is a good opportunity.” This time she feels lucky to be in school, though she misses her friends who are not there. They’ve been very proactive and engaged.”Ĭira, 13, spent the last lockdown at home, getting on with her lessons. “But the students care a lot about their education. “A lot of people underestimated the resilience of the young last time,” said Harrowell. Zahra’s classmates’ heads bob around silently on screen as she talks. “So far it’s all right.” With five siblings, finding space to study is a problem and she also has to help them with their work. “At times the wifi can be a bit fuzzy,” says Zahra. Zahra, 17, is at home taking part in an A-level psychology class with 11 home-based classmates, while their teacher and sixth form director, Youlande Harrowell, is in school leading a lesson on the psychologist John Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis. “You can get an instant response and they can ask questions, but it’s clunky. The day after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, Braggins taught an A-level American politics class remotely. ![]() Scattered in small offices and classrooms around the light, airy building, teachers conducted live online lessons to fidgety children stuck behind a screen in kitchens and bedrooms. One of the few children working in a classroom at the school. Their world retreated to the insides of their bedroom.” Some did not leave their homes for months on end. Students who were scared of parents who have been reported for abuse in the past. Students with parents with alcohol issues. We had students stuck in houses with domestic violence going on. ![]() “I know from talking to some students that was a miserable experience. The school’s deputy head, Martha Braggins, is the designated safeguarding lead. While the quality of remote education and the disproportionate impact of learning loss on the poorest children is a major concern, safeguarding is also a worry. “I’m most concerned about these children, whose parents have decided not to send them to school,” said Brown. Sixty-seven per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals, yet few of the vulnerable children entitled to a school place during lockdown, alongside children of key workers, have turned up this week. The Urswick ranks as the most disadvantaged secondary school in London and the fifth most disadvantaged in England. One of the reasons Brown’s school may be empty is that anxiety among local families is high, with soaring Covid infection rates locally (946 per 100,000), and the Homerton hospital nearby – where many parents work – is under extraordinary pressure. Only 35 children are attending school at Urswick during the lockdown. ![]()
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