San Diego Parents Bracing For More Remote Learning

Speaker 1: 00:00 Teachers students and parents across San Diego County are preparing for the start of this fall semester with schools offering only online classes. Last week, the governor rolled out new school guidelines, which mean all local public and private schools will be prohibited from reopening, unless Mora has done to slow the spread of the Corona virus. Having kids taking classes at home again is a challenge for everyone involved, but perhaps most especially parents, whether they're trying to work from home or have to go to work themselves, parents will again be juggling competing responsibilities journey may are to San Diego parents facing that challenge. But the Vasquez is a father of two whose kids attend Sherman elementary school. He's an educator at UC San Diego and has been working from home and Virginia Davala joins us. Her children are in the Chula Vista school district. Virginia is an essential grocery store worker and cannot work at home. I think you'd probably be now first. I want to hear from both of you on this, do you support the governor's move to keep schools closed until the spread of the virus slows down? Let me go to you Virginia first. Speaker 2: 01:12 Um, believe it or not. I do. I think at being the kids' safety, um, it needs to come first, so I think we need to be cautious and especially because we still don't have control and that's very scary. Speaker 1: 01:25 So how about you? Do you support the governor's move to keep schools close? Speaker 3: 01:29 Yeah. You know, in a nutshell I would say yes. And I think, uh, to Virginia's point right now, I think safety is the number one concern. And I think as we recently saw, even though initially we didn't have, you know, high, high infection rates and, and, uh, you know, things seem to be okay, uh, after a short time of, of, you know, reopening everything, you know, everything kind of search pretty rapidly. So, so, you know, it's, it's a pretty good indicator of what can happen if, uh, if we start getting too relaxed too quick. So, so yes, I definitely be in agreement with it. Speaker 1: 02:02 Tell us, how have you been handling working from home with your kids at home during their school Speaker 3: 02:08 To be completely honest with you? It's been kind of, kind of crazy, right. You know, one would think that it'd be a little easier not having to commute, uh, not, not having to do the, the, you know, the daily rituals of actually going up to campus for a moment there. I had to set up, uh, a makeshift, uh, office to do my zoom calls for work from my kids, uh, disheveled bedroom, right. Where I had to keep the camera off because there was bunk beds in the back, uh, that were, that were a mess. Um, luckily we were able to kind of reconfigure some space here at home. Uh, my wife and I decided to purchase a whiteboard to kind of keep all the different zoom meetings for the kids and the, the hourly meetings and so on and so forth, uh, to try to be a little bit more organized, but it, but it was, it was taking a level of work, uh, and it was impacting us, you know, mentally, uh, so, so really feels like Speaker 2: 03:00 I've added on an additional job that we don't necessarily get paid for. Right. And, and I gotta be quite honest. We're probably not as good as the teachers that my students typically have at school, Speaker 1: 03:11 Virginia. Now, you, you don't have the privilege of working from home. You're a single mom and a grocery store worker. How have you been balancing work and home life right now with kids online schooling? Speaker 2: 03:23 It's been a very difficult, I'm constantly at work thinking of the kids and they're wondering, you know, are they, are they doing what they need to be doing? So it's been very difficult. I am thankful for my eldest daughter who has helped me to monitor the kids that make sure they're meeting their deadlines and setting up the zoom conferences. So, but, but besides that, it's, it's been hectic. Speaker 1: 03:49 I also understand that one of your sons, Virginia has an individualized education plan and used to get speech therapy. Is that kind of thing continuing during distance learning? Speaker 2: 03:59 Unfortunately it hasn't. I think it was the first week the speech therapist has sent me something for him to work on. It was just like a pamphlet. We worked on that and we have never heard we submitted it. Um, we emailed and we'd never heard anything back, Speaker 1: 04:14 Virginia, have you seen changes in your children either positive or negative from being out of school and learning at home? Speaker 2: 04:21 Oh, most definitely. Most definitely. I've noticed physically my kids, my oldest son he's he's acted out more. He was involved in football, involved in the gym and those things changed and he has way too much time on his hands. So he gets a little frustrated being home, constantly. My youngest with speech, I noticed that if I'm not constantly reminding him, he stopped reminding himself how to correctly say words. So I'm constantly saying, say it again, stop, try it again. And I told him, you know, you really got to practice because you know, you're falling back and it's really scary. As far as attitudes, it's been really, really challenging in the sense that they need to get, you know, they, they need to continue to continually be stimulated, uh, to, to get involved with things. And, and for some reason, if I tell them, Hey, you know, baking is a, you know, there's a lesson in that just because it's coming from dad, it's not as impactful. Speaker 2: 05:16 Right. But we've, we've had to get very creative and trying to incorporate learning in the things around us. So daily applications, um, in applying pressure, uh, kind of to, to Virginia's point and reminding them about their reading, about their enunciation, uh, being able to, uh, to, to find out about virtual resources that are available, uh, and get them involved somehow. And so that can be pretty challenging in itself because not all virtual resources are created equal right now. And so there there's a lot of different things to consider, but for us it's been, it's been pretty challenging, um, in, in not having them kind of let off their steam as they would in a typical setting in school. So, Speaker 1: 06:01 So even though you both agree that it's best kids stay at home for now, what is your message to school districts about what they should consider as they plan for the upcoming school year online? Speaker 2: 06:15 I really feel communication between the teacher and the parent is most important. It was sad to hear my son's sixth grade teachers say he only had 8% of his class zoom joining him to the activities and the work 8%. That's really sad and I'm not blaming parents because, you know, it's all new and this was all new for everybody. And a lot of people don't know technology. So we need to keep that in mind, but I really believe they need to come up with some type of community to keep the communication between the parent and the teacher and what they need to be on the same page to help the child. I've been blessed because I have amazing teachers who have reached out to me, understand my situation and have kept the communication. You know, I'm getting off at one in the morning and guess what? Speaker 2: 07:07 I have a teacher I email and he right away. And he works with me and getting them the right equipment. It's really hard because we're a house of four and we have one computer. So that's another dilemma and that shouldn't be happening. Yeah, I, I would, I would definitely piggyback off of the things that the Virginia mentioned right now. You know, it seems like a lot of the burden is really laid on the teachers who are people too. And they, you know, some of these teachers are single parents as well. Uh, you know, their parents, obviously they're, they're working from home, they're learning how to work from home. They have to create their own space. Uh, and sometimes that could be overbearing for them. Right. So I think, uh, being able as a district to support teachers in a realistic manner in which we're not assuming that we're going to be able to continue to teach the same way that we traditionally have taught in the classroom for hours on end, but rather looking to how we can streamline a process in where we can come up with, uh, with metrics or outcomes that are realistic for this time. Speaker 2: 08:14 Right. And I think this is a challenging thing for districts because you have to consider, uh, you know, the, the, the things that are required to be taught, but also be realistic to the times that we're in, in, in the attention that people can have on a screen, uh, in the ability, uh, to, to take into consideration, uh, you know, cultural competency, uh, right. And that might mean that we're innovative in, uh, in including, you know, perhaps something that, that the child is doing at home. And how do we align that up to one of the lessons that kids are supposed to learn. Right. And I think this is scary in itself because it's gonna require work. But I think right now, the way we're set up all the work is falling Speaker 3: 08:56 On the teachers and the parents, uh, directly in, in, in, in frankly, that's not fair. Speaker 1: 09:00 I've been speaking with two parents of school aged children in San Diego, baito Vasquez and Virginia Davala. Speaker 3: 09:07 Thank you so much. Have a good day.