Janis King's third-grade daughter
refuses to participate in Zoom school meetings or be recorded with a
smartphone for school projects.
King's 14-year-old
son is on a different sleep schedule than the rest of the family,
starting schoolwork after 1 p.m. that requires his mother to sit with
him to watch video assignments because he has trouble staying focused
due to ADHD.
"At school, he did better. At home,
there are so many distractions I have to sit with him. We watch the videos together. I read him chapters and he answers questions," King said. "For my third grader, every day is a fit She doesn’t like the online stuff. She is a people-person in class."
For
some families, remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has been
a struggle loaded with stress: parents are feeling overwhelmed managing
the education of multiple children with different learning
styles and students used to face-to-face instruction are becoming more
disengaged with online work.
With the last few
weeks of school on the horizon in Michigan — most districts
end the school year in mid-June — the conclusion of online learning at
home cannot come soon enough.
King says it's a
struggle every day to get school assignments completed and get her
children engaged in online work since K-12 schools were shuttered 11
weeks ago. As stress and frustration built during the initial weeks,
King decided not to force her children to work online.
Rather,
their days are filled with home improvement projects using a circular
saw, baking recipes, impromptu fashion shows and recreating family
photos from generations ago.
"My kids are doing
schoolwork, it has just been very challenging on an emotional level,"
King said. "We are trying to focus more on life skills due to the fact
that we never get this time together as a family when we’re all home."
Parents
in Michigan were abruptly thrown into homeschooling roles when schools closed down in mid-March. At the same time, many are trying to work full-time jobs from home.
The result: some families have been ditching class.
Several
parents confessed to struggling with the demands of online learning,
especially those in households with multiple children, those with children with special needs and those where internet access and devices
are spread too thin.
At least 300,000 students in Michigan lack internet access or a computer at home while
they are shut out of schools during the pandemic, according to a survey
by Michigan school officials. That can lead to squabbles at home over
devices, parents say, or kids waiting for their turn to do schoolwork.
School
leaders in Michigan say they are doing their best to keep students
engaged in online learning but struggle to make it more appealing to
students to spend hours in front of computers.
Educators
say they know some kids are ignoring schoolwork because students in
Michigan have been told they will all be promoted and missed school work
"won't count."
According to a national poll of 849 teenagers by Common Sense Media done
in April, 41% of teenagers say they hadn't attended a single online or
virtual class since schools transitioned to online learning. Data on
Michigan students was not available.
Some Michigan
districts had initially set goals of three to five hours a day of
school-related activities online, but most parents report their younger
children are working in chunks of time that maybe add up to 30 to 90
minutes a day. For older children, one to two hours is more typical.
Students
in West Bloomfield schools were suffering from screen fatigue with the
demands of five or so hours of schoolwork at the start of remote
learning in March, said West Bloomfield School District Superintendent
Gerald Hill.
"Your mind becomes numb after so much screen time," Hill said. "We have to use screen time judiciously."
Educators
have said from the start that students need emotional support first
during the pandemic and their health and safety are the first
priorities. But student disengagement is a reality in most schools.
According
to a new national survey of educators from the Education Week Research
Center, 21% of students have been truant during the coronavirus, with
higher rates in high school and lower rates in elementary school.
The
survey found most teachers do not have daily access with most students,
with 37% reporting daily contact, 50% having weekly, 9% reported
contact once and 4% never having contact.
Steve
Carlson, principal of Sandusky High School in Sanliac County, said he
tried to measure how many students are engaged with teachers, how many
are submitting work and how many are gaining mastery in new material.
That required calls home when texts and emails went unanswered.
"With
a lot of families, there is a lot going on right now, and it's
stressful. Our phone calls sparked some crucial conversations in
households," Carlson said.
Student engagement is
measured in a variety of ways, Carlson said, and last month, the
rate ranged from 41% to 94%. Less than 10% of students have had no
interaction with a teacher.
"We can see these are the ones we are most concerned about," Carlson
said. "We are formulating plans to try harder. We may use the U.S. mail
to send information."
Carlson said there is a point
at which he has to consider some students are not engaged in schoolwork
during the K-12 building shutdown.
"At what point
will it be just acknowledging this is not a family who is going to
interact with us now, and we have to wait until it gets closer to
normal?" Carlson said. "We are mindful that we don’t know how this
impacts all families. For some, the education of the child is not a top
priority. Feeding them is right now."
“We just need to keep learning going," Carlson said. "We will fill in all the gaps when learning returns to normal.”
Learning
loss from COVID-19 school closures has been predicted by education
researchers who estimate reduced learning gains in both math and
reading.
The Collaborative for Student Growth at NWEA, a national nonprofit that assesses learning, issued a report
last month that said preliminary COVID slide estimates suggest students
will return in fall with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading
relative to a typical school year.
In math,
students are likely to show smaller learning gains, returning with less
than 50% of the learning gains, and in some grades, nearly a full year
behind, the report said.
Tara Mager, principal at
Meridian Early College High School in Midland County, said she and her
team at the school are always asking how they can support students at
home and keep them engaged.
"Developing
a relationship with kids is critical," Mager said. "We did a family
survey. We called families directly. Early on, we showed families we are
in this with you. This is stressful. We get it. From there, we can help
with the learning."
Mager said her team examines
student engagement by looking at data from learning platforms to see who
has submitted work and who has not. The district makes calls, emails,
texts. Students who are non-responsive get case managers who dive deeper
into the challenges.
"We met as a team, look
at interventions and what else we need. Then it's boots on the ground
from calling to visiting homes," Mager said.
Mary
Ellen Bross has worked for 21 years as a licensed master social worker
for Utica Community Schools. Before the pandemic hit, Bross was working
with 132 special needs students across multiple high schools who ranged
from emotionally impaired to those on the autism spectrum.
Bross said
being out of the school building is a particular challenge for children
with special needs because they typically associate school work with
being at school.
"The stress level for so many has
gone up significantly," Bross said. "For these students, school is the
place where they go to do work, where they are encouraged and supported.
It's that environment that makes the difference for them. At home, they
don’t do as much work when they don’t have the staff."
Virtual
learning is not for everyone, Bross said. While most students in her
district have a computer, many students with special needs are not used to do assignments that way.
"An educator makes a difference. Having a teacher there to assist you makes a difference," Bross said.
The transition to online learning has created a new class of at-risk students, says Rebekah Richards, co-founder of Graduation Alliance, school disengagement experts who work with 60 districts nationally to help re-engage those who can't or won't go to school.
“We
are seeing students who are thriving in a traditional environment. When
they are removed from teachers, other students, connectivity, when the
structure has been removed, they are no longer participating," Richards
said. "That is very concerning.”
Richards' company
was hired by a school district in New Mexico to reach out to students.
Conversations with Michigan districts are underway, she said.
Key
to mitigating a coming wave of dropouts is a short-term approach,
Richards said, to deploy additional layers of human support for
vulnerable populations who are learning remotely.
“There
is no silver bullet in this, but there are principles that work,
sometimes having new faces works. It the persistent consistent outreach
that makes the difference,” Richards said. “That outreach is difficult
to sustain without additional resources.”
Michigan
education officials have not made decisions yet on whether the new
school year this fall will be online, in school buildings or a mix of
the two. Some parents say they are looking forward to the end of the
school year and for the online education experiment to be over.
Beth
Smith, the parent of four daughters in Avondale Schools and a
substitute teacher, said when the coronavirus slammed school doors shut
in March, she thought she could easily manage the education of four
children — ages 5, 7, 9 and 11 — at home.
"I was
gung-ho when I got the stay at home order," Smith said. "I said 'I am
going to do this.' As the weeks went on, I said this is ridiculous. This
is too much. It is not realistic. So we did our own thing and tried to
get the work done."
Smith said the challenge in her
home is that her daughters have different learning styles. Two are
motivated to get their work done and do it with ease. Her
fourth-grade daughter requires constant redirection all day.
"It
is a lot of juggling and me not getting my own stuff done. It's
constantly checking who needs help, whose on what platform, what
microphone is not working. Trying to balance all of that," Smith said.
"I
am stressed. My daughter ... is stressed," Smith said. "At school, she
gets a lot of support. She has someone helping her with math. She has a
great learning team at school, and here, it is just mom."