Summer Produced Clues For Fall Remote Learning

Wexler-Grant sixth grader Carlos Cordoba hadn’t seen anyone except his family and the kids across the street from him since schools closed in March. Even his video games had only voices and avatars for him to interact with.

So when he started a summer program through New Haven Public Schools and his classes were held on Google Meet, the interaction through video calls made all the difference.

“He thoroughly enjoyed it. He would fuss at his little brothers to keep quiet, ​‘Someone is talking,’” said Cordoba’s grandmother and caretaker, Janice Morton.

As New Haven parents, teachers and administrators consider fully or partially remote learning plans, everyone agrees that the city needs to figure out how to improve online learning. This year’s summer program offered some clues to what works. Such as: live conversations between instructors and students on relevant topics.

Measuring Success

The New Haven Public Schools summer program began in mid-July. It ended in the first week of August.

The district’s Youth, Family and Community Engagement department runs the program every year to prevent vulnerable students from disconnecting from school. These students can include immigrant or homeless children, children who have been in juvenile detention and others that the YFCE connects to community resources like food banks.

The Covid-19 pandemic challenged YFCE to create a virtual version of the program that would still meet the department’s goals.

The department signed up 93 students, who ranged in age from sixth graders to high school seniors. They met over Google Meet in small groups with peers from their age group to take roughly three classes a day.

The classes varied by group. Sixth and seventh graders took a science and math-based class, an art class and a class on social justice. Eighth graders had classes on career exploration and music, rap and poetry. High schoolers could learn about trades and culinary arts. Every Friday was a day of fitness classes and rap battles.

The focus on music and rap was a creative way to offer students language arts credit this summer, said YFCE Chief Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin.

“We had to make it super visual, so students can see and share and have engaging conversations,” Joseph-Lumpkin said. ​“We had to make that additional shift to ensure we hook the students.”

Around 75 to 80 students were in class on any given day, according to Joseph-Lumpkin.

“We’re satisfied with that. Many of them have realities that do not allow them to attend every single day of the week,” Joseph-Lumpkin said.

When schools closed in March, the department was staring down a list of around 3,700 students who were particularly vulnerable during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite grocery deliveries, technology help and more, only about one-third of the list participated in online school five days a week.

For Joseph-Lumpkin, both attendance and connectedness are signs that the summer program has succeeded. Joseph-Lumpkin’s team calls or visits families once or twice a week to make sure they have everything they need. She wants to know that families are picking up the calls and that students are staying safe.

Her team has identified 25 students who are on probation. Only five of them wanted to join the summer school, but her team is in contact with 20 and she knows that they have stayed away from violent lifestyles, she said.

Each day of summer school begins and ends with half an hour of reflection and community building. Staff members stay in those virtual rooms all day, so students can check in if they need to.

“We’re trying to get to the root causes [of disengagement],” Joseph-Lumpkin said. ​“Vulnerability and disengagement go hand-in-hand.”

The Favorite Class

One class in particular worked for Cordoba and his classmate, Daniyah Blakney.

Organized by University of New Haven professors, the social justice class exposed the rising seventh graders to a rotating list of guest speakers. The same UNH students hosted each class to give the summer schoolers a sense of familiarity and community.

The kids would talk with the UNH professors about racism in the Covid-19 pandemic and police brutality. Then Cordoba would tell his grandmother all about it.

“Daniyah and I always ended up having different opinions on things, so we would talk about why my opinion is better or why her opinion was better,” Cordoba said.

The class is a new addition to the summer school program and was prompted by current events like the recent Black Lives Matter protests, Joseph-Lumpkin said.

UNH professor Danielle Cooper coordinated the class. Like the guest speakers and student hosts, Cooper volunteered her time on top of her usual job.

“It came from such a spark that when I invited others to participate, many people responded and said to let them know what day,” Cooper said. ​“This is a moment. A lot of people are asking themselves what they can be doing to help.”

The volunteering lined up with the mission of the Tow Youth Justice Institute, which Cooper helps lead as the director of research. The institute staffs the state body charged with decreasing youth incarceration.

“We take a practical approach to reform,” Cooper said. ​“I hope to talk to kids about things that are actually affecting them and empower them. That is our overarching goal and that’s part of why this partnership was this valuable.”

Last Thursday was the last class of the summer, and UNH community policing expert Lorenzo Boyd was the guest speaker.

Boyd said that community policing is about bringing police officers and community members to solve a problem. He said that task can be difficult when African-Americans have hundreds of years of negative history with the police, starting with slave patrols.

“I tell police officers that this is the history that people of color are viewing. They will say, ​‘I’m not that officer,’” Boyd said. ​“Then the police roll up on you and say I’m not going to hurt you, but they have a gun, handcuffs and a baton — all things that are likely instruments of pain.”

Boyd talked about the community’s role in community policing as well and asked them to try to find one police officer to get to know better.

“Smiles are contagious. Soon they’ll say that they really like being in Newhallville and that the people are nice to them there. Then they’re going to start talking back to you. They’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Boyd said.

One of the students had started the class lying down and on his phone while the video call continued. By the end, he was alert and volunteering answers to questions. Many of the students rated it as their favorite session of the class.

Like Cordoba, Daniyah Blakney’s favorite summer class was Cooper’s on social justice.

The rising Worthington Hooker seventh grader said that YFCE’s program won her over, particularly in contrast to the boredom she experienced earlier in the spring and summer.

“It was really fun. At first I was not interested in it because I would have to wake up really early. But I actually enjoyed the program,” Blakney said.

For Blakney, the difference from the spring wasn’t the live video calls, which she did have with teachers and peers. Live video calls were not technically allowed this spring, but some teachers held them anyway. The district is promising live Google Meet calls for remote learners this fall.

What was different for Blakney was the content and style of the class.

“It wasn’t the teachers just talking at us. They were having a conversation with us,” Blakney said.

Blakney liked learning about courts and jails so much in the social justice class that she might want to do further research on the topic.

“Building more relationships with police when you’re younger, that’s one of the solutions to keeping youth out of the system,” Blakney said.

Fall Decisions

The New Haven Board of Education has committed to hosting the first ten weeks of school virtually rather than in-person or as a mixture of virtual and in-person classes. The state still has a final say on the decision; the board is waiting to make its case to the state.

Blakney prefers a hybrid of in-person and distance learning, but she said that she would not mind full distance learning if she is allowed to see her friends. Most important to her is consistency from the district.

“My school has been really all over the place,” Blakney said, describing surveys and messages that pointed to different reopening options.

Morton has mixed feelings about whether to send Cordoba back to school.

“As a grandmother, I wanted it to start last week,” Morton said. ​“But I’m afraid. How much cleaner can I trust the school system to be?”

She noted the burden on teachers as well, who have to remind students to wear masks while teaching.

What’s clear to Morton is that the summer program has worked for her grandson.

“When he was in school, he made a couple projects and everything was red and black. I thought that we gotta get him some help. And he wasn’t excited to give it to me,” Morton said.

This summer, Cordoba was proud of the projects that he created and proud of being able to give them to his grandmother and uncle. He spent so much time talking about his classes that Morton asked for Sunday as a day of rest from the topic.

“I can see the growth in him,” Morton said.