Students and parents deserve more support from schools during the COVID-19 shutdown

Students in Thurston County are in their fourth week at home, and what support have they gotten from teachers? Almost nothing, except for emails directing them to educational websites with no lesson plans.

A district email informed us instruction wouldn’t begin last week because the focus “has been on parent/teacher conferences,” which didn’t occur. This email stated teachers would begin providing lesson plans on April 13. The last day of school for our children was March 13. That teachers need a month to begin teaching is unacceptable. My nieces in California began receiving remote learning lesson plans after just one week. And I turned all my own college classes into distance learning versions within two days with three children at home.

We are all trying to cope during this unpredictable, stressful situation; however, taking over a month to receive lesson plans is inexcusable. Local school districts have spent millions of dollars providing students school-issued Chrome books and implementing online tools such as Canvas. What we do not have is educational programming for our children to show for this investment. How can the district justify this lack of instruction for a period representing 10% of the school year when there was the time and capacity to provide it? Teachers are still getting paid.

I am not blaming individual teachers. In my experiences with my children’s teachers, most are committed to their students. The fault is with the school district leadership for not providing clear expectations to their teachers. Some teachers have even said in emails that they aren’t allowed to provide lesson plans yet. This lack of leadership is certainly partly to blame for why my children’s teachers aren’t providing educational instruction.

Instead of lessons, we’ve received emails from teachers and administrators telling us they’ve been binge watching Netflix shows, baking bread, reading to their dog, crafting, and playing board games. School district leaders and teachers have shown themselves to be tone-deaf to the concerns of the students and parents if they can openly share and post on Facebook about these things without also teaching our children.

So much is out of our control right now; however, doing one’s job — if one is lucky enough to still have one, and one that can be done remotely — is not one of them. This crisis has been made worse by leaving homeschooling solely up to families for an entire month, especially for single parents, many of whom are deemed essential workers. According to the Office of Financial Management, 27.1 percent of children under 18 live in homes headed by a single parent. In many cases these single parents will struggle to find ways to balance working to keep a roof over their heads with finding a way to homeschool their children, in many instances not even being physically in the home most of the day. For all the talk of concern over a digital divide, a divide in home educational opportunities because of difficult circumstances will harm the most vulnerable students disproportionately.

Our schools could have played an important role in building the children’s resilience during this period by maintaining educational instruction, and with this, a critical connection with them. As an educator for close to 20 years, from a former high school teacher to a university professor, I believe it is wrong to not show more support to our students and families now. My provost sent a memo to all the faculty at Pacific Lutheran University shortly after we moved to distance learning, reminding us of this by sharing a former student’s response during another crisis when asked, “What do students need from me right now?” The student responded: “We need you to show up for us in more ways than just teaching.” The provost stated: “Her words have stayed with me all these years later, reminding me of the roles we play not only in teaching students the core concepts of our disciplines and mentoring them into their lives of purpose, but also of being role models, guides, and grounding agents. Students look to us to help them define the situation and to make sense out of confusion.” K-12 teachers need to be reminded of this.

And now we find out the remainder of the school year has been canceled. While I understand the reasons behind this decision, many families are left wondering what they are going to do to give their children an education. How are parents to get their children to engage in learning tasks with so little guidance and support from administrators and teachers? Even before this happened, the teachers in our district provided only 103 full days of instruction. As an educator and an extremely frustrated parent, the lack of direction from the district and lack of instruction from the teachers has been enormously disappointing. Now that the rest of the school year has been canceled, I know I’m not alone in my concern about our children’s education, nor am I the only parent who believes our children are being cheated.

I’m deeply saddened for all the children who will no longer get to go to school this year, especially because so many of them need a lot more support than they have received. Administrators and teachers already have squandered a month’s worth of teaching. Let’s hope that from now until the end of the school year they ask themselves: “What do students need from me right now?”