Post-COVID trauma drives elementary schools' challenges: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: With COVID-19 quarantines in the rearview, grade school students are now meeting in classrooms in person after years spent learning at home. USA TODAY reporters observed classrooms in California and Virginia to see how students, teachers, admin staff and parents are coping.
We asked, "Are we back to normal yet?" The answer is no. The reporting team found new challenges on top of old ones. Veteran teachers are worrying that students may never catch up.
USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong hosts.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Your first word I want you to spell is strengthened. Strengthened.
Alia Wong:
With the national emergency lifted and the COVID-19 pandemic in rear view, we zoomed in on schools across America to find out how schools are coping.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Once you're ready, give me a thumbs up.
Alia Wong:
We asked, "Are we back to normal yet?" The answer, in short, is no.
USA Today journalists found new challenges on top of the old ones. Veteran educators tell us they're scared that students may never catch up.
I'm Alia Wong, an education reporter for USA Today. Welcome to a special episode of Five Things. Let us know what you think of this story by sending us a note at podcast@usatoday.com.
Daisy Andonyadis:
You ready? I read it first, then you follow. Toughen.
Students:
Toughen.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Transported.
Students:
Transported.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Strengthened.
Students:
Strengthened.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Foretelling.
Students:
Foretelling.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Loosening.
Students:
Loosening.
Alia Wong:
The lesson today isn't just about spelling. It's also about learning words that capture the intensity of the last several years.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Transplanted.
Students:
Transplanted.
Daisy Andonyadis:
And sharpening.
Students:
And sharpening.
Alia Wong:
The aftershocks of the pandemic keep coming. Teachers, principals, parents, and children are all still navigating the disruptions to education. It's the fourth school year warped by COVID-19. These third-graders learning how to spell are living it.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Now that we've practiced reading them, are you ready to spell?
Students:
Yes.
Daisy Andonyadis:
All right. I don't know if you're ready for this.
Alia Wong:
Kayla Jimenez and I spent nearly a year visiting classrooms in Virginia and California. We wanted to report how this year, the one that should have felt most like the before times, actually went.
We found that the ground lost during the years of virtual learning has had a significant cost. Scores of students are still testing well below grade level. Absences are a major issue, too.
Daisy Andonyadis:
Actually, now it's at my desk everyone else is [inaudible 00:02:10].
Alia Wong:
Even when they do make it to class, the psychological, emotional, and social impacts of the last few years have taken their toll. Two big problems: concentration and patience.
Daisy Andonyadis:
We're going to skip this one now, but then you're going to go to the next one where it says the picture of the mug and what you were going [inaudible 00:02:31].
Alia Wong:
I followed Ashley Soto for several months. She just finished third grade at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia.
Ashley Soto:
Ms. A, that was a very long word.
Daisy Andonyadis:
I'm sorry, Ashley. Welcome to the third grade.
Alia Wong:
That's third grade teacher, Daisy Andonyadis. She got into teaching after researching early childhood development and studying psychology. Ashley, like pretty much everyone, calls her Ms. A.
Daisy Andonyadis:
I think after COVID, it was a lot more not being able to stay in one spot. The virtual really messed up the stamina. You're looking at a computer screen all day. You're not going outside. You're not reading a book. Your eyes are stuck on a computer and I think it has to be short and sweet too, with my kids. If I have them on the carpet for 40 minutes, oh, God bless their souls, they're going to be fidgeting all over the place.
Alia Wong:
In many ways, Ms. A considers herself a therapist first, and a teacher second.
Daisy Andonyadis:
I'm going to be honest, around January is when a lot of things calm down emotionally and socially and then the academics are stronger, but you still teach. I'm not saying we don't teach. I just think you're more heavily focused on the social-emotional piece and once they're able to self-regulate being like, "I'm angry, I want to go ride the bike and get out my anger and then come back," then the academics come easier. If you keep pushing material down them, they are not going to retain them, so it's very important to focus on their emotions first.
Say it, toughened.
Students:
Toughened.
Daisy Andonyadis:
That means to make more tough, yesterday. So, like, "Last year, I had to toughen myself up."
Speaker 3:
[Inaudible 00:04:07] experiences of life toughened a lot of you. During the pandemic you were toughened. We were all toughened a bit because we had to stay home.
Students:
That wasn't in kindergarten.
Speaker 3:
I know, but it's [inaudible 00:04:22]. Who remembers it? Raise your hand if you remember it. Was it fun?
Students:
No. Yes. [inaudible 00:04:31]
Daisy Andonyadis:
No shouting, remember, guys?
Speaker 3:
That was too hype. Way too hype with that. So, bring it back down, but you were toughened.
Alia Wong:
Out over in California, fourth grade teacher, Wendy Gonzalez sees the same issues with her students.
Wendy Gonzalez:
Kindergarten, first grade, second grade where you're supposed to build those social skills, they don't have the social skills. They don't know how to talk to each other. They don't know how to communicate. They're always arguing, yelling, fighting.
Alia Wong:
The longtime teacher has been at Downer Elementary School for the past three years. She says the challenges were already high, even before COVID-19 showed up.
Wendy Gonzalez:
These poor neighborhoods of color, we have the least amount of resources, but we have the highest workloads, and the highest amount of issues and less resources.
Alia Wong:
Quarantine, virtual classes, and COVID-19 restrictions have only exacerbated these challenges.
Wendy Gonzalez:
We have a lot of social-emotional needs with our kids. They're fighting, they're not knowing how to do conflict resolution, how to express themselves. They can't even articulate what they're feeling. They know something's wrong with them, but they can't... Being enclosed at such a young age and not having that social experience at that age affects them as they move on.
There's a lot of stuff that our babies are going through, the violence, the shootings. That's another thing we have to deal with. The social-emotional. We want to start something here, but who's making those decisions? I don't think the teachers are. The decision making's all going to come up from the top, who are hardly ever in the schools. You know what I mean?
Alia Wong:
The issues at play in the neighborhood influence what happens in the classroom, too.
Wendy Gonzalez:
They don't have privacy. They don't have a quiet place to study. They don't have any of that. Housing is through the roof right now and the cost of living for our families, so that's also affecting their social emotional needs.
Alia Wong:
Let's go back to Virginia. According to Ashley's principal, Hasibi Cruz, kids are still adjusting to the norms and expectations of school in person.
Hasibi Cruz:
The hardest part of returning from the pandemic, not coming to school, is stamina, getting up in the morning, getting back into a routine of coming to school.
Alia Wong:
As critical as attendance is, it's hard to get students to show up.
Hasibi Cruz:
Between last year and the year before, we were still doing contact tracing. There was a lot of fear, because we still had to let people know if they had had exposure. Every time one of those emails went out, people would wonder like, "Oh is my kid...," it just raised awareness, and now we're past that, but there's still the fear, and also just stamina of like, we come, we come, we come.
Alia Wong:
That's why Principal Cruz and Ms. A are taking extra steps to help kids like Ashley who struggle with making it to class.
Hasibi Cruz:
Multi-tiered system of support. We have meetings on kiddos, and so she's one that we've had since like kinder, because she was not logged in. She was not getting anything at home. It was so hard to [inaudible 00:07:31]...
Daisy Andonyadis:
Her emotions.
Hasibi Cruz:
She was very emotional. Last year, she was very dysregulated, but she has made it back.
Alia Wong:
MTSS stands for multi-tiered system of supports. It's a model schools use to address issues in and outside the classroom that affect a student's behavior or performance. That can mean home visits or help from a social worker, if a student needs shoes or a screening.
Daisy Andonyadis:
They become bigger and stronger friends. Why do you think that now. Ashley?
Ashley Soto:
Because they're talking more and more, and now she likes...
Alia Wong:
I asked Ashley about her attendance, and you can hear in her reply that she knows it really matters. The adults in her life are reinforcing that.
Ashley Soto:
My mom will drop me off first and then she'll just drop my baby brother off. So first, she'll drop me off where I can have good attendance actually, but good attendance is for me, good, because I don't want to miss things or just I miss the whole day of school, because school goes by really fast to me, so I just want to get there in timing to get better at it, and where I can have play with recess and have lunch and just have fun with my friends more.
Alia Wong:
Ashley is just eight years old, but she's very attuned to the responsibilities on her mom's shoulders.
Why do you think you were maybe having difficulty with attendance earlier in the school year?
Ashley Soto:
I feel like it's because my mom, she sleeps sometimes, but it's not her fault. She has to take care of three children at a time.
Alia Wong:
I spoke with Ashley's mom on the phone.
Ms. Soto:
[foreign language 00:09:33].
Alia Wong:
During the pandemic. She was doing really poorly. It did affect her a lot in many ways because she fell back. She fell behind, and now we've seen a lot of change in all aspects, which I am very grateful to the school, to the teachers who help her daily.
"I don't speak English and in the little that I can help her in matters of school. It's very little, honestly, because as I told you, I don't have, let's say, the knowledge or the understanding to help my daughter."
Her mom says being back in school every day is exactly what Ashley's wanted throughout quarantine.
Ms. A talks specifically about this kind of joy with her students, emphasizing why it's fun to be in class together. Beyond the human interaction itself, Ms. A hypes up the learning software the kids seem to love and reminds them why it matters to show up.
Daisy Andonyadis:
And then slowly build to be like, then because more intrinsic motivation be like, "I want to be here cause my friends are here, and I want to be here to accomplish my goals. Alexia or DreamBox, or just to be here because it's fun."
Rodney La Flore:
All right, just remind y'all, I need to hear everybody's voices. Okay. All right. Eyes up here. Here we go. Ready? The word is join. You're going to say, "Join."
Students:
Join.
Rodney La Flore:
Say it by sounds.
Students:
J-oin.
Rodney La Flore:
Good. Next word, the word is boil. Your turn, say, "Boiled."
Students:
Boiled.
Rodney La Flore:
Say it by sound.
Students:
B...
Alia Wong:
Back to our fourth grade classroom in Richmond, California, teacher Rodney La Flore explains the learning curve his students are experiencing. It's a stark difference to go from online learning at home, to being surrounded by your peers with no option to hit a mute button.
Rodney La Flore:
The Zoom year felt like a totally different teaching experience than teaching in person. I look back at my Zoom year and it feels nothing like what I'm doing now. The behavior management stuff didn't really exist in Zoom. As soon as I could figure out how to mute everybody on Zoom, super easy when I was talking, but obviously what comes with that is no engagement.
There were times during that Zoom year where I had maybe 10 kids, at most, who I could tell were following along and listening, but the rest, black screens. Some kids kept their camera on, but I could see were asleep or doing something else, and then I called on them and they just, no response.
Coming in has been a lot better. Some kids can still be headaches, but I feel a lot more like what I'm doing actually matters. What I'm teaching them, they're learning, and it's just good to have them back.
Alia Wong:
Wendy Gonzalez puts an emphasis on creating a supportive atmosphere.
Wendy Gonzalez:
It's because I care about you that I'm on you, and so that's the kind of classroom that I lead, and the environment in my classroom is you don't laugh at each other. You help each other. We're a community. We're a family. We help each other succeed and if she succeeds, you succeed. When you succeed, he succeeds, so it's more communal because we come from communal people. Our communities are communal.
Alia Wong:
Rodney La Flore agrees, for the most part.
Rodney La Flore:
On the one hand, one kid does something, they're all like, "Yeah!", and it happens often. One kid says something good and they're like, "Yes!," and they're cheering him on and that's great. As it wears me down, I start to get like, "Okay guys, we got to keep going up. We can't cheer for everybody all the time."
Alia Wong:
On top of the entirely new group dynamics that arise with being in person, schools still can't find enough people to fill positions. Many of the people working with students are on edge and fragile themselves.
Wendy Gonzalez:
But yeah, a lot of teachers are done. If they haven't [inaudible 00:13:28] by now.
Daisy Andonyadis:
[inaudible 00:13:29] people leave.
Wendy Gonzalez:
If they haven't done that, they're ready. I've seen a lot of my coworkers from different schools. They are struggling. Even just like, "I need to take a mental health day." Taking stress leave because it's too much. Especially for a lot of our older teachers that weren't used to the technology.
Alia Wong:
Principal Cruz is not only responsible for supporting the teachers in her school. She's also spent this year convincing her students' parents that it's safe to bring their kids in, and that a school nurse can tend to them.
Hasibi Cruz:
I say, "Listen everybody. [foreign language 00:14:02]. For real, in the emergency room, you don't have to go to... If your kiddo has low, if there isn't a fever and their symptoms are not extreme, bring them here, and have her check them and tell you if they need to go home." And they now come and bring them like, "We're unsure. They're saying they're sick, there's no fever, they haven't thrown up, there isn't any of this. Can we bring them?," and so she checks them in the clinic with the parents, talks to the kiddos, and then determines if they're good to go or stay.
Alia Wong:
Despite all the challenges, hardships, and pain, Wendy Gonzalez and all the educators we followed see their work as a calling. What's the future for these kids? Nobody knows, but their teachers are in it for the long haul.
Wendy Gonzalez:
Oh yeah. And I've said it over and over. If I didn't love my community so much, I would be gone. I want to leave this place. For me, it's more of a... It's not about the money, it's not about the titles. It's not. It's more about what am I doing to help out my community?
And for me, it's like a obligation, because of paying back the sacrifices that our parents did for me, our ancestors, our elders that fought for us to be here. Not a job. It's not job. I told the kids, I go, "I don't see this as a job. I don't. It's not like I'm going to work. I'm going to do what I love to do." And I told them, I go, "If you study, if you work hard, you're going to get to do whatever you love to do and it's not going to seem like work."
Alia Wong:
Thanks to Mark Solvel, Alexis Gustin, and Cherie Saunders for their production assistance. Our senior producer is Shannon Ray Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty.
Let us know what you think of this episode by sending us a note to podcasts@usatoday.com.
Thanks for listening. I'm Alia Wong. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow with another episode of Five Things.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Post-COVID trauma drives elementary schools' challenges: distracted students and stressed teachers
