The Digital Divide: How Distance Learning is Failing Houseless Families
Choosing between work and a child's education
For many houseless parents, their job can be a vital source of stability and security, and taking time off from work to take care of their children and make sure they are able to keep up with remote learning can have huge repercussions. In fact, as The New York Times noted in 2010, for many losing or even missing a day of work can mean being fired or being denied a raise or promotion. Children who are unable to attend school due to safety concerns or because they lack proper clothing and supplies are also at risk; meanwhile, households that rely on public housing may lose access to it if they miss too much work. This means homeless families often face enormous challenges—often having no choice but to choose between caring for their child and keeping an income flowing into their household.
Even families with higher incomes across the board reported life-altering difficulties as they had to spend more time at home teaching their kids during the pandemic. This can potentially mean more time at home for parents, but it can also translate into lost work hours and even career disruption. The effects of this on houseless families are amplified to a dangerous degree. Given the parents or caregivers who are houseless are working a low-wage job, their inability to do it remotely and their lack of flexibility make them more likely to not have time to dedicate to their children's learning.
NPR interviewed mother Vanessa Shefer on her experience:
"In May, Vanessa Shefer felt torn between her job at Dollar Tree and helping her kids with remote learning. "It was just getting crazy," she remembers. She would work from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. "When the kids were having to log on, I just had to trust that that's what was happening there." Shefer says she can't afford a home for her kids without a good-paying job — and she can't get a job while her kids need help with school.
The kids' father dropped in to help, Shefer says, but their two eldest sons struggled. Both have specialized education plans, and both had trouble navigating school online. "It's hard for them to grasp what to do," Shefer says. "And they get frustrated and give up before they even try... My children were required to have four Zoom meetings a day with different teachers, and all of them assigned work. So it was too much."
Shefer ultimately chose to quit her job to be with her children full-time.
April, a mother in Chatham, N.J., also felt torn about leaving her children, in her case to look for work. She and her four kids were placed in a cramped hotel room earlier this year after they lost their home. She described her experience to federal lawmakers in a July online briefing, in which she was identified only by her first name. She recalled riding the train, looking for work in the midst of the pandemic, and her kids calling, "complaining, 'We can't log on. The Internet's not working.'"
The hotel was about 45 minutes away from their school, April said. "My kids had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no outlet. I found a job, and they were angry at me because I'm leaving and they can't."
Inequity in online access
Lower-income and houseless families are often in situations where they do not have internet access, and often if they do it can be unreliable if they are relying on using a shared computer, limited hours of facilities, or live in areas with connectivity issues. Many students reported their zoom classes getting constantly frozen and missing out on key parts of lectures, instructions, and group participation. Parents often have to assist the children during the lessons with technical operations and some parents themselves may not possess the knowledge of how to even navigate the online operations necessary. Despite some school districts coming up with wi-fi hot spots, many families were too out of range to use them. Other area internet providers and districts gave out free devices and wifi to families but the internet speed was too slow for all the students to use at once.
.jpg)
School is the core stabilizing factor for houseless children
The nature of the pandemic has been one of extreme emotional instability for most, even with ample resources, but for houseless children, the school serves as a grounding point for an otherwise unstable foundation. Moving constantly, poverty, and arduous circumstances already cause trauma for these children and their families, but pandemic-related issues cause further alienation and force of stability for them. School provides structure in the forms of friends, adult guidance and mentoring, intellectual stimulation and challenge, safe facilities, and routine.
Safety vs. learning
NPR reported on students and their families in many areas with severe weather risking their safety in order to be able to keep up with schoolwork:
"In Eatonville, Wash., which sits in the shadow of Mount Rainier, school superintendent Krestin Bahr remembers two children in particular. Last spring, with schools closed, they had come to pick up their free meals, then lingered outside the elementary school so they could use the Wi-Fi to work.
"It was freezing cold," Bahr remembers. "They were huddled right in the doorway up against the closed doors... We knew that the family was living in their car, but they didn't have any connectivity. It just tore my heart. I thought, 'You know what? That just cannot happen in America.' "
In her remote town, Bahr says school is the only social safety net for homeless youth. After seeing those two students, huddled in the cold, she told herself: "We are never closing our doors again... It's our moral obligation."
This fall, as Bahr has slowly reopened Eatonville's schools, she quickly welcomed her most vulnerable students back into the buildings so they could at least log onto district Wi-Fi and stream their lessons from the safety of the cafeteria."
Long-term effects of distance learning on youth
The problem of limited access to education among homeless families is a very real one, but it’s also not one that can’t be overcome. The issue needs to be addressed from all sides—not just with families, but also with employers and communities. As former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty wrote in 2010, employers need to rethink their policies about flex time and telecommuting so that workers aren’t penalized for caring for family members or attending funerals or school functions; on a broader level, communities must ensure schools have adequate funding to help students succeed regardless of where they live while businesses need to work toward creating schedules that allow people to attend important events or even school meetings outside of normal business hours when possible.
Many school leaders say the aftermath of the closing remained a jarring problem to ponder. They were aware that closing the schools would hurt the kids who needed it the most - homeless students - as they not only experienced difficulties with learning and in poverty but were also more vulnerable to abuse and trauma. "There is nothing equitable about distance learning for children and youth who are homeless," says Barbara Duffield, the head of SchoolHouse Connection, a national nonprofit that advocates for homeless youth. "The cost of keeping everyone safe is costing some children much more."
Even in a pandemic, Duffield says, schools must do more to serve students experiencing homelessness. It's not only the right thing to do, but she also says, it's required by the McKinney-Vento Act, a federal law that guarantees homeless children the ability to go to school, no matter where they're staying, what paperwork they have, or whether they have a parent with them.
The effects of closures on students are often much more severe than people realize, and it’s critical to mitigate them in every way possible. It’s not enough to just reopen school buildings—school districts must also adapt their pedagogy so that they can be responsive to student needs long-term as the psychological and educational consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are still being studied. The past two years of on and off school closures could have set back students significantly in their learning and social development.
Comments
Post a Comment