A teacher's pandemic experience reveals connections to social justice
In my blog post about celebrating teachers, I wrote about how most of us can choose to understand – or choose not to understand – how the pandemic impacted people who don’t have the same privileges we do. But teachers do not have that same choice. They saw things with students they couldn’t ignore. In an interview with Xavier Chavez, a teacher at George Middle School, we explored the challenges posed by the pandemic and the barriers students experienced in trying to access school remotely.
Elaine: What was the most daunting challenge adapting to distance learning during the pandemic?
Xavier: When kids come into the school building, I can always tell if they are stressed or bringing something in with them. For the school day, we can provide a place that’s calm and productive for them and give them resources to do their learning. So, it was a real change to have the students in their own homes this year.
A lot of the things I previously could only imagine I could really see impacting them in their work. For example, I had students where it was so noisy in their house, they had to mute the Zoom call unless they were talking to the whole group. In my own case I have a room where I can do Zoom meetings and it’s going to be quiet for me. But kids have brothers and sisters, and dogs, and parents and people are doing things in the same house. It’s really hard.
What types of barriers to access did you see your students experiencing?
Everyone’s situation is so different. Normally, parents know we’ll take care of the students from 9:00 to 4:00 while they are busy. There are some people who had the privilege to work from home and got to be with their kids and the experience might actually have been good for them. But other people like front-line workers that have to get in and out of the house and have to be in-person in their jobs and still have childcare needs had a huge challenge.
All this stuff I might normally hear about, but it wouldn’t impact our school day. This year we had people with different schedules for work or they didn’t have childcare, internet, or experience doing online learning – or were not able to create an environment at home that was conducive to online learning. All this stuff is apparent, and I saw it all! It’s sometimes hard to watch but it’s great when we can help out and do some things to get kids online and engaged.
How did your school district help you?
I really applaud our school and our school district because they worked really hard to get resources to students to do distance learning. You need a laptop, an internet connection, a Wi-Fi router – many kids do not have these things or they don’t have them for their own self. We had a good laptop distribution program where everyone could come in to get a laptop, exchange a laptop, get a Wi-Fi router or multiple routers to handle the traffic in busy households. There are all these little things that can really be barriers for students.
How do you think the year went?
Anecdotally there is still a lot to learn about working with students online but I’m hopeful we made some impact. A year and a half ago we had no idea we were going to do all of this. We basically created online schools for everybody and trained all the students and their families on how to do online school as best we could. I did see increasing participation and adapting by students the longer we went through it. I’m really impressed with all the students and families who just made this happen.
How do you see what happened in the schools being connected to social justice issues?
Think about the classic picture of school from the 1950s or earlier where all kids all sat in the uniform desks and they were ready to learn. That is so deceptive in a lot of ways. Students have so many different stories, different situations, and come with different resources. Expecting everyone to be uniform in the way they arrive at school is unrealistic and unproductive.
Being a teacher, one needs to be open and listen, and see beyond the first impressions with students because there is a lot of differences out there. If we want to match what we are providing to students, we need to know who our students are.
For me, that means slowing down, listening more, and really letting students tell me who they are and what they need. I have to think about what I have to give them more like an offer to do this work and ask how I can help them get there. Is there anything you need? Can I explain anything to you? Can I get you any resources like a pencil or computer?
It’s just about meeting people where they’re at. It’s a practice that cultivates and discovers new ways to learn all the time.
Based on what teachers have modeled, what first steps can individuals and businesses take to pursue social justice and equity?
I would say work with parents if you employ people that are parents with school age children. If you create policies, just think about a lot of the challenges that are there and be open to challenges you haven’t thought about.
A lot of times we are working from our own experience in designing programs and policies, and treating other people how we would want to be treated. There is value to that, but there is also value in really listening and being patient, and supporting people as best you can while still meeting your organization and business objectives.
Everybody’s story is different. Trying to get people to fit into boxes and treating everybody equally has value, but people need different things to be able to get into the game or be at the table. Let people be who they are and give them different things to meet their needs.