When schools across the Commonwealth closed last March to prevent the spread of COVID-19, families everywhere braced for the worst.
Confusion over the mechanics of virtual learning and concern with how working families would survive dominated the conversation at school committee meetings and on social media platforms for months, while parents everywhere struggled to adjust to what was, oftentimes, a scary and overwhelming “new normal.”
Now, nearly a year later, how have they done it?
Some have left their jobs, collecting unemployment as they take on a new full-time role as their children’s teaching aide. Some have learned to juggle the two, relying on spouses or extended family to fill in the gaps.
Such is the case in the Johnson household, where Helen Johnson and her three daughters, Ally, 13, Izzy, 10, and Evy, 6, have settled into an uneasy routine.
For Johnson, who helps run Lynn’s Salvation Army with her husband, Kevin, the stress feels constant. Her two older children both have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and she suspects her youngest will soon qualify for one, too.
All three have struggled with remote learning in different ways. For middle child Izzy, who has been diagnosed with autism, the change in routine was initially the source of much anxiety, and for youngest child Evy, who possibly has an undiagnosed learning disability, each day is a battle.
“My 6-year-old is regressing a lot,” Johnson said. “She’s just all over the place and she cannot focus on the computer. It’s so hard because the teacher is constantly telling her to pay attention.”
As a result, the family’s days have become a careful balancing act.
At 7:45 each morning, Ally shuts herself in her room to log into her classes while Johnson helps her energetic younger children prepare for school, while making sure they don’t interrupt their sister.
During a 10 a.m. break three days a week, Johnson takes her two younger children into the Salvation Army office — where Johnson and her husband also run an after-school program — so mom and dad can complete necessary paperwork and oversee food pantry operations while the kids finish up the rest of their virtual schooling.
There’s a lot of tag-teaming involved, Johnson explained.
“Sometimes I have to run to the food pantry, so my husband will set up the pantry with the forklift, and then I’ll leave them home for five minutes while we switch,” Johnson said. “We literally see each other driving past on the street because he’s coming home while I’m going. Then when the pantry’s almost done, we switch again.”
However, Johnson worries most about her eldest, who she said has become more and more withdrawn as time goes on.
She added that as the months stretch into a year and longer, she fears her children’s love of learning will slip further and further away and become replaced with frustration over a “new normal” that often fails to account for individualized needs of young learners.
“I just really pray that people understand that even if it’s just a month … that one month will do the world for my kids,” she said. “For Ally to even be able to see what her school looks like and regain that excitement before the summer, for my middle one to be able to see her friends before she moves to middle school — I really hope they at least get a month.”
Like Johnson, Saugus mom Amanda Vincente also understands all too well the balancing act virtual schooling has become for many families.
The single mother of five starts her day by making sure her two middle children, sons Jordyn, 15, and Antonio, 8, are logged on to their classes and her youngest children, Christian, 3, and Briella, 1, are set up with toys or a movie for a distraction in a nearby room. Her eldest, Ariaunna, 19, often slips away to spend the day at a friend’s house.
Vincente then sits with Antonio to make sure he’s completing his assigned work — no small task for a child recently diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
“It’s so stressful. Never in my life did I think I was going to be a teacher, a mom, everything,” Vincente said. “It’s crazy.”
Although she’s in favor of fully remote learning, there are still days when Vincente, who now collects unemployment after the pandemic forced to leave her full-time job, said it all feels like too much.
“I’m used to getting up at 6 a.m. to get ready for work then taking off all day and coming back at like, 6 at night,” she said. “I’d do a little bit of housework and go to bed again. Now I feel like I’m stuck completely.”
According to an October 2020 survey conducted by Pew Research Center, a vast majority of U.S. families enrolled in any form of remote learning since March were nearly 50 percent less likely to report satisfaction with the experience than families receiving fully in-person instruction.
Issues with remote learning have also been exacerbated for low-income families, with the survey finding that roughly 72 percent of lower-income parents of K-12 students were worried their children were falling behind during online classes, compared to 63 percent of middle-income and 55 percent of upper-income families.
Another study from Country Financial found 21 percent of parents were forced to change or reduce their work hours as a result of changes in schooling or child care due to the pandemic, while another 7 percent left their job altogether.
Yuri Sanchez-Rio, a basic needs case manager for Catholic Charities and mother to a Lynn Public Schools kindergartener, fears the problems posed by remote learning run deeper than her family’s individual experience.
As someone who grew up in an immigrant household and knows the difficulties non-English speaking parents often face navigating the American school system, Sanchez-Rio worries about children for whom language is yet another barrier to receiving an equal and adequate education.
While her 6-year-old daughter, Sofia, has done well with remote learning, Sanchez-Rio said that isn’t the norm for all students.
“My parents don’t speak English, so I know what it is to have to translate everything for your parents,” she said, adding that parents of early elementary school children have the added difficulty of not being able to rely on their students to explain what’s happening in the classroom. “When you have a kindergartener who doesn’t know how to read, who doesn’t know how to add, you have to be right next to them.
“(Teachers will say) ‘get your adult,’ but this adult is dealing with an English-speaking teacher who doesn’t know what they’re saying.”
To ease some of that burden, Sanchez-Rio has been helping other parents at her daughter’s school by providing translation services to families that need them, but the problem is more complex than simply being able to understand what’s taught in the classroom.
She said she’s also had to explain to many of those same families how to sign up for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp benefits.
“In a larger scope, it’s heart-wrenching because they have no idea they’re missing out on food stamps … they’re missing out on things their kids have to do for school. They don’t even know if their kids have work or not, so how are they supposed to know if their kids did it?”
When it comes to returning to any form of in-person learning, Sanchez-Rio hopes to see families more involved in the decision-making process.
“There should be more unity in regards to what people are going through in real life, not just what our committee or the school thinks,” she said.
Elyse Carmosino can be reached at [email protected].