In September, when Uday Narayanan was given the choice of resuming in-person classes or remaining at-home in the Greenhill learning model initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Upper School senior found the choice easy.
“Seeing how the cases in Texas were managed, it didn’t seem satisfactory for me,” Narayanan said. “My mom is immunocompromised, I figured it was safer to work from home.”
As Upper School families decide whether they want their students to return to in-person classes in January, they are facing hard decisions: return to campus, and face a heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 and potentially exposing vulnerable family members to a deadly disease; or choose the safer remote learning option and the more challenging learning environment that entails, students and faculty said.
For Narayanan, staying with remote learning has been the right choice for his family. Still, he finds it difficult to learn as well at home as opposed to a classroom, and he encounters challenges that in-person students don’t face.
“The most egregious example is in Vector Calculus,” Narayanan said. “The camera quality can be a little bad sometimes. It can be hard to copy down what is on the board.”
Seeing how the cases in Texas were managed, it didn’t seem satisfactory for me,” Narayanan said. “My mom is immunocompromised, I figured it was safer to work from home.”
Teachers, too, notice the differences in class participation that at-home and in-person learners exhibit.
“Kids who have been really active one week come home and it’s suddenly harder for them to talk, and students who have been quiet online come in and are more inclined to engage” Upper School English teacher Andrew Mercurio said. “It’s like some kind of barrier is preventing them from speaking.”
This problem is not exclusive to the Upper School. Middle and Lower School students can also be less inclined to participate if they attend class through a screen, teachers said.
“I have a son in Middle School and a daughter in Lower School, and both of my children seem to be more engaged. They feel better being on campus than remote,” Mercurio said. “My children would struggle if we went back to remote learning.”The less structured nature of online classes may also cause difficulties for students who are used to the routine of in-person classes, teachers and administrators said.
Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester contends that the a full return to in-person learning will benefit some students, even if it means loosening current social-distancing rules.
“For students with learning differences, structure is important and they may not be getting that structure from home,” Worcester said. “They could be getting that structure here, at school.”
Mental health is another component of the debate over remote-learning versus in-person classes during the pandemic. A study of 3,300 high school systems by America’s Promise Alliance found that nearly one-third felt unhappy or depressed in recent months.
“As human beings, we are social creatures,” said Shanti Majefski, Head of Social and Emotional Learning at Greenhill, “we thrive on connection, and it doesn't matter if you are an introvert or extrovert, having connection with human beings is important; it just might look different for different people”
The reality is that both learning models present difficulties that Greenhill says it is trying to address while navigating a historic pandemic.
The Classroom at Home
The drawbacks of remote learning first became apparent to Greenhill students, faculty and administrators last spring, when the expanding pandemic led the school to suspend in-person classes on March 13.
After a summer of reflection and analysis, Greenhill administrators began the 2020-2021 school year with efforts to address some of the deficiencies that came to light.
“What Greenhill does that most other schools don’t is that the school actively tries to make sure that at-home and in-person learners are truly equal,” said Director of Academics Jason Yaffe. “Most other schools will provide an at-home option but try to nudge you to going back to physical classes.”
This sentiment is communicated clearly to teachers, who have taken measures to ensure that at-home learners can access the same resources and opportunities as in-person learners.
“One of the things we’ve done for the ninth and 11th grades is to give them little physics kits,” Upper School physics teacher Michael Haskins said. “When we are in class and I have a lab activity, I will tell them to pull out their kits and make a model. It has worked so well that some students returning to in-person bring the kits with them instead of using normal equipment.”
Teachers have also come up with a few techniques to draw out at-home learners from their online shells, including having a time exclusively for at-home learners to participate
“I like to treat at-home and in-person learners as two groups,” said Haskins, “I ask if anyone in the class has questions or comments, and then I will turn to the camera and say ‘anything from at-home learners?’”
Financial Upheaval
Early on the morning of Sept. 8, junior Isaac Gray busily tapped into his computer. He was struggling to log into his Dallas Independent School District account for the first time.
For Gray, managing new technology platforms were the least of his concerns after the six months that had upended his life.
Last spring, Gray sat in Greenhill classrooms. He walked about the Greenhill campus. He ate lunch with his friends.
A few months later, he was walking onto a new campus, DISD’s Hillcrest High School.
Isaac Gray is the pseudonym of a former Greenhill student who agreed to be interviewed at length for this story. The Evergreen became aware of Gray’s story from his Upper School classmates. For privacy reasons, Greenhill administration declined to answer any questions about Gray or his situation.
Gray says didn’t realize that his departure for Spring Break last March would effectively end his 13 years as a Greenhill student. Now, he misses the campus, his friends, his teachers, his classmates, even the school’s old learning management system.
Gray’s story highlights how COVID-19 has done more than expose educational inequalities or inflict death and physical suffering in families. There has also been a financial and emotional toll, as parents have lost jobs, making it difficult for some families to afford private school tuition.
Gray’s mother works in the tourism and event planning industry, a corner of the national economy that nearly fell apart after COVID-19 hit. For Gray and his family, everything suddenly changed as his mother became one of nearly 51.7 million Americans who have suffered from a significant loss of income during COVID-19, according to a US Census Bureau House Pulse Survey.
Everything came to a head suddenly for Gray and his family. His schedule for his junior year was planned and his teachers were selected. He was already looking ahead to graduating from Greenhill in 2022.
“I did not realize changing schools was a possibility until two weeks before the deadline for tuition,” Gray said.
Gray says he wasn’t able to get the financial aid he needed to remain at Greenhill. And so, after 13 years, he was forced to change schools.
Now, as he attends classes where sometimes half of the students don’t show up and most don’t submit homework, he’s frequently reminded of what he is missing by not being at Greenhill.
“I wish I didn’t have to leave the way I did,” Gray said. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my teachers or my friends. One moment I was there and the next moment I was gone, I’m not able to have closure.”
Access to Resources
The upheaval experienced by Isaac Gray is just one facet of how socioeconomic inequities among Greenhill students are affecting education quality during the pandemic.
Some families can’t afford highspeed internet service. Other families have multiple children trying to learn in the same space or young children who need care while older children are trying to attend online classes.
I wish I didn’t have to leave the way I did,” Gray said. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my teachers or my friends. One moment I was there and the next moment I was gone, I’m not able to have closure.”
“There is one instance I’m aware of where there’s a student who lives in an apartment complex and has to go to a communal area for Wi-Fi,” Upper School English teacher Blake Harkey said.
During the spring, Greenhill established a fund for families struggling with everyday necessities as a result of COVID-19. Additionally, 10% of financial aid is being used to defray the costs of extra needs such as books, required sports gear and, in some cases, internet access, said Director of Financial Aid Amy deBorst.
“She is the one responsible for contacting at-risk families eligible for the COVID Relief Fund, in part to help fund some of those needs, in order to close some gaps,” Head of School Lee Hark said. “Talking to her, I have gotten the feeling that many of the families have gotten what they need.”
Hark added, “Some students and some faculty assume that Greenhill students have an equitably dispersed access to resources. And that’s just not true,”
"Still a risk"
Since the Upper School began hybrid classes in September, many students and faculty have had mixed feelings about the transition.
In one typical experience, Harkey tried repeatedly to pull up a video to show to his students in the room and online. After 25 minutes of failed attempts to share his screen with his remote students, Harkey gave up, having to come up with a new lesson plan on the spot.
Teachers who had gotten used to online classes have found it a challenge to manage both in-person and at-home students.
“Thinking about it as a teacher, we have been trained to focus on the students in front of us and it is sometimes easy to forget that there are a similar number of cohorts behind us online,” said Harkey.
Harkey’s son, William (Dub) is a kindergarten student in his first year at Greenhill. His wife, Hannah Harkey, is a Lower School teacher and third-grade team leader. The transition from the beginning of the year with all Upper School students and faculty online to hybrid learning was especially difficult for the Harkey household. When the Upper School was completely remote, both parents were able to stay home and help Dub with his classes. They were also able to have Blake’s parent’s come and help manage Dub while they taught their classes.
“I prefer to be on campus because I like seeing my students and everything going on, but we didn’t have the choice to continue to do what was working, so that has been tough,” said Blake Harkey. “It has been more tough personally because we haven’t been able to see my folks and family.”
Similar to the Harkey’s, Amy Bresie also has concerns about being in-person. Her husband has diabetes, which places him at greater risk of serious complications from COVID-19. Her husband is able to work fully remote and won’t have to return until January at the earliest, Bresie said.
“It certainly makes us more careful and more aware,” Bresie said. “We know that this is not something we can take a chance with. I made the choice that I do not do well at home and being at Greenhill is better for me but that was a hard decision because we know that it is maybe a small risk, but still a risk.”
Navigating Inequality
The pandemic has exposed fault lines of risk and inequality in nearly every aspect of people’s lives, even within the Greenhill community
“The thing is, we must avoid making the assumption that all students have the same resources whether that be technology, access to reliable internet and wifi, or access to reliable adults and mentors that help them with material,” said Harkey.
Even the seemingly straightforward policy that all students must have their cameras on exposes a potential area of inequality. In some cases, students are not comfortable with sharing their living or learning environment.
“There are a lot of circumstances where students are sharing a room with their brother or where students have to be in the same room as their mom because it is the only room with wifi,” Harkey said. “These are the sort of things that you might not want to have open for everyone in the class to see.”
The thing is, we must avoid making the assumption that all students have the same resources whether that be technology, access to reliable internet and wifi, or access to reliable adults and mentors that help them with material,” said Harkey.
Over the past four months, there has been a constant adjustment for students to be at school one week and at home the next. On campus, students are able to see the board clearly or ask the teacher questions directly—realities that students and faculty no longer take for granted.
The Upper School’s planned January shift to in-person learning for all students who desire that option will still leave some students at home, trying to learn as best they can under challenging circumstances.
“I learn more at school than I do at home,” said senior Matias Henry. “When I am at home it is a lot harder to stay engaged because I am not actually present in the class. It is difficult when there are technological issues that cause me to miss chunks of lessons or when I can’t find times to jump into a discussion like I would at school.”
Henry does not have anyone in his immediate family with health issues, and that allows him to go to school without having to worry about putting a family member at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. At the same time, he knows that this is not the case for all families.
“I know that there are families that have members that are immunocompromised,” Henry said. “I definitely think that I have a privilege over those people because I am able to learn at school without the worry of seriously risking the life of someone in my family.”
Senior Ava Markhovsky, on the other hand, has a family member who is immunocompromised and has been intensely quarantining since March. Unlike Henry, she has to be extra cautious so that she does not put her family member at risk.
She plans to remain a remote learner when the Upper School opens more fully in January.
“It was easier in terms of mindset when everybody was at home because you didn’t feel ‘othered’,” Markhovsky said. “The day I felt the worst was when all the seniors came to school because there were certain classes where I was one of two people at home and that stung.”
Similarly, Uday Narayanan also plans to remain a remote-learner when the second semester gets underway in January because his mother is immunocompromised. While Henry is able to stay easily engaged in classes in-person because he is within eyesight of his teachers, Narayanan has to be responsible for himself.
“It is more on me to focus and to make sure I get everything,” Narayanan said. “It would be a lot easier if I was sitting and a teacher was right in front of me.”