This is Part One (The Learning Gap) of a four-part series The Times Weekly is publishing on how Black students in Joliet Grade School District 86 are coping with the challenges of the pandemic, and the return to in-person schooling. Next week: Part Two–Can culturally-responsive teaching help close the gap?
The Learning Gap – Part 1
By Kay Bolden
Jamya Johnson, a 6th-grader at District 86 Washington Jr. High, had never heard of the terms “pandemic fatigue” or “e-learning exhaustion”, but she described her experience with both as well as any expert.
“Staring at that little screen every day, for hours, a lot of times I would just zone out. I could hardly think of answers when teachers asked questions. It was hard to keep listening or pay attention. It seemed like a TV show I didn’t want to watch. I just wanted to go to sleep.”
Keeping students engaged online was only one of many challenges parents faced. The Center for Disease Control reported that “reduced access to in-person learning is associated with poorer learning outcomes and adverse mental health and behavioral effects in children.” For Black children, the pandemic-driven closure of schools could not have come at a worse time.
According to researchers at McKinsey & Company the “impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading.” The pandemic widened national racial achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning.
District 86 is the third-largest school district in Illinois; nearly all (95%) of students are low-income. The preexisting achievement gaps between Black and white students were already stark. The 2019 School Report Card shows that less than 7% of Black third graders were meeting or exceeding grade-level expectations in English/Language Arts. In Math, less than 5% of Black students were meeting or exceeding expectations. (By contrast, one-third of white students were hitting those benchmarks.)
Daphne Payton described her family’s time with Covid and e-learning in one word: difficult. “It was so hard, especially in the beginning. I still had to go to work in-person, so I had to make sure my child was awake and prepared and logged in before I left home.”
Her son, Asir Brown, a 6th grader at Dirksen Jr. High, just wanted to play video games instead of struggling with his math assignments. “I would call and text him while I was at work. Are you listening to the teacher? Are you getting your work done?”
“Asir had a tough time in math anyway and being online made it easier for him to just skip it instead of asking for extra help,” Payton continued. “I just worried all the time. Would he get too far behind? What if we got sick? How would he ever catch up?”
Payton was certainly not alone with her concerns. She already had wi-fi in her home, but many families did not. School Superintendent Dr. Theresa Rouse pointed to the district’s quick action to get Chromebook to every single student, and hotspots to those who needed them. Other districts were not able to accomplish this, and the availability of the technology helped parents who were also dealing with health, employment, and housing issues during the worst of Covid.
“When a crisis hits, that’s when you find out what everybody is made of,” Rouse said. “Everyone in our community stepped up to help out with everything that was needed.”
Joliet’s student body is 10% white, 23% Black, and 63% Hispanic; the teaching staff, however, is 78% white, 8% Black, and 14% Hispanic. Some research suggests that Black students who have a Black teacher perform better on standardized tests in reading and math, in part because they may have a more optimistic set of expectations for Black students.
Dr. Tanisha Cannon, Deputy Superintendent, reflected on the district’s efforts to address the disparities in achievement and equity. “A group that I am so proud of is the Equity Champions, who are teachers from each building who attended monthly sessions with me to work on these issues.” As a guide the group used Zaretta Hammond’s book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, to explore how culturally responsive teaching benefits students of color, and how to optimize student engagement using those strategies.
Dr. Cannon noted that measuring the impact of equity work can be complex and will take time, but that she sees progress. “When we see teachers supporting each other–noticing and calling out microaggressions, for example–those are the small wins that help change mindsets.”
At Washington Jr. High, Jamya is glad to be back in school even though it took a few weeks to readjust. “In the beginning it was weird to be back. I’d forget simple things, like my teacher’s name, or where the bathroom was.” She laughs at how funny that seems now. “My teachers were very nice when we came back. They gave us time to talk to our friends, talk about how we felt, and just calm down before we had to do any classwork. That was good.”
Giving the students space to de-stress is also part of Dr. Rouse’s efforts to embed social and emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom. SEL can be thought of as a process to help students–even very young ones–develop the self-awareness, self-control, and social skills that help them succeed. After Covid, many students returned to school with increased anxiety, fears about getting sick or becoming homeless from financial stress on the family or managing trauma from losing a relative to the pandemic. SEL in the classroom takes those factors into account.
Payton also had high praise for the teachers at Dirksen Jr. High. “During the craziest part of Covid, they would reach out. They would always do a Zoom even if it was after hours or set up a phone call to talk about Asir’s progress. I felt like they were there for us.”
