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Children of the pandemic By Logan Schiciano

the challenges and coping strategies of the world’s youngest learners

The initial thrill that many young children experienced learning from home back in March has quickly faded into an endless stretch of fear, isolation and uncertainty. The pandemic is not only proving costly for their academic, social and emotional development, but has taxed parents and teachers, who have morphed from homeschool assistants, to scientists fielding questions about the virus, and psychologists attempting to calm their children in an age where peace of mind is seemingly nowhere to be found.

Remote roadblocks

Like most across the United States, 8-year-old Gavin (right) and 11-year old Abigail, the children of upper school health and wellness teacher and Class Dean Shelly Kaye, spent last spring online. While Kaye commended Dobbs Ferry’s Springhurst elementary school for their execution of the remote transition, she noticed how the switch affected Gavin’s state of mind.

“It was harming his emotional health. He didn’t want to do his work. You could see how staying at home was wearing on him,” she said.

She noted that her son, a third grader, is generally very social – Gavin said the most challenging part of being at home all the time was not being able to see his friends and give them hugs. He also recalled the technical challenges he faced.

“Sometimes I had computer problems, like my mic or video wouldn’t work,” Gavin said. Because Kaye and her husband were both teaching remotely themselves in the spring, they weren’t always able to assist.

“It was just chaos in the spring. It was impossible to keep up with parenting while trying to work at the same time.”

Kaye added that Gavin would often get sidetracked from his remote classes and instead play computer games.

Kaye said she’s had to rely on Abby (left), the eldest of the two, to take on more responsibility.

She said, “It’s been difficult for me to accept that I’m turning it over to an 11-year old to manage her own schedule. Under normal circumstances, I would never expect anything like that.”

Middle School Head of School Tasha Elsbach was left in a similar situation, but as a single mom expected to be in-person every day this fall, she could not rely on sending her five year-old daughter to public school, where the virus dictates the schedule and fate of in-person classes. Fortunately, Elsbach and a few other parents discovered Learning Pods, a private learning program that sends teachers directly to students’ homes. While her daughter is now able to attend school five-days a week, in-person, alongside some of her neighborhood friends, it’s not the kindergarten experience she or her mother imagined.

Elsbach said, “It was scary. I cried. This is not what I wanted for her, but at the same time I also realize this is a privilege and I’m very lucky to have this alternative.”

In New York City, concerns surrounding distance learning have not been solved so easily. Ever since the public school system scrambled to provide the proper technology for each student to learn remotely back in March, teachers recorded a dip in class attendance and were in the dark – literally, because students aren’t required to turn on their cameras – with regard to their students’ well-being.

Masters alumna Quetzali Torres ‘94 (right), a middle school art teacher at PS 187 in Washington Heights said, “You really worry for low income families with multiple children within the same household and kids who are in hostile situations at home, but because we were online, it was really hard to assess what the situation with each child was.”

Per NYC public school protocols, schools call home when children are absent but this process has obstacles, as Torres noted, since many parents don’t speak English.

“Some kids did their work, some did no work at all, but there are still not enough devices for the kids throughout the city." She added, "I can imagine there may not even be adequate quiet areas for the kids to learn in a focused manner.”

Even nine months into the pandemic, children are also having trouble utilizing online platforms, like Google Classroom, to submit their assignments.

“They’re great at playing video games and talking on the phone, but in an academic setting, I feel like there was very little effort by NYC public schools to properly prepare students and parents,” she said.

Torres teaches roughly 270 students across three grades and said the elevated reliance on technology during the pandemic is hindering student’s ability to be transparent with their teachers.

Sixth grader Abby agreed. “When I’m remote it’s so hard to ask my teachers questions.”

Torres reported that when she asked some of her students why they couldn't turn in their work, many said they were afraid to look stupid by asking for help.

Elsbach said her daughter would complain about not getting called on, her frustration reaching a point where she told her mother she was not going to speak anymore in class. “I’m going to mute myself!” – a proclamation that was ultimately short-lived. While Elsbach intervened in this instance to set things straight, she recalled other occasions where she simply could not.

“I was her only playmate, But a lot of the time I would be right there totally ignoring her , because I was working. One day she said to me, ‘I’m firing you. You can’t be my mom anymore. You didn't spend any time playing with me.’ And I just felt like a horrible mom.”

Torres has also noticed how stay-at-home restrictions have affected students’ camaraderie amongst each other. She recalled a seventh grade class in September.

“When I was done with the lesson, the kids asked me, ‘Can you just keep this meet link open a little longer so we can just talk? There are so few chances that we have now to talk.’”

A silver lining?

While acknowledging their privilege during the pandemic, many have been able to reflect on the positive side of their respective situations.

For one family, remote learning provided a break from a challenging year. Substitute faculty member Alexis Higgins and her family had just moved to Dobbs Ferry from Washington Heights. Her sons, then in fifth and seventh grades, had been having a hard time adjusting to their new school.

“They were psyched for a lot of reasons,” Higgins said. “Especially for my oldest one, who was socially really unhappy, it was a great relief for him to not have to deal with the things he’d been going through.”

Torres noted that some students do better in a remote environment.

“We had a kid who developed Tourette’s syndrome in sixth grade and he is not really having to deal with it as much. He’s doing school in the comfort of his home and all those anxious moments that would make the tics come out are gone,” she said.

In some respects, the independence that Elsbach's kindergartner developed while learning from home has blown her mind.

Elsbach said, “One day I left a box out in the hall of the dorm and she brought it in, set up her iPad, got the supplies down from the shelves and started painting and sawing away. She was incredibly creative. I was so impressed.”

Students displayed a similar sense of imagination in one pre-kindergarten class. An educator of 28 years, PS 187 teacher Jill Hovde recalled a project she assigned at the end of last year.

She said, “My kids picked an animal, researched it and did an online presentation. I had kids dressed up pretending to be zoologists, other kids who made posters or told stories. It was truly incredible.”

Because Hovde’s students are so young – just 3 and 4-years old – she credits the children’s parents for the positive experience she had with remote learning.

“Everything my kids are doing is because the parents are helping them do it. I feel very fortunate that I work in a school where the parents are so involved.”

Being at home also allowed for many families to share milestone moments together. English teacher Darren Wood said his two eldest children Mia and Luka were right there when their little brother Owen took his first steps.

Math teacher Marianne van Brummelen, the mother of three boys, said she witnessed the development of her kindergartener Cole’s reading skills first-hand. She explained that her children all love school, but worried that if her middle son’s reading level didn’t progress, he would become discouraged.

“I didn't want that to be the reason he didn’t like school anymore,” she said. “I was in such foreign territory trying to teach him this skill that is pretty complicated, but on the other hand it was really cool to be a part of that process.”

The talk about COVID-19

On a recent November night, at the Wood family dinner table, news broke that 28 year-old Mo Salah, a Egyptian professional soccer player, one of the family’s favorite, had tested positive for COVID-19. Wood recalled his children’s response: “Is he going to survive?” While the Wood parents have thoroughly explained to their children that young, healthy individuals, like Salah, are at extremely low risk of dying from COVID-19, Wood believes the question is indicative of the fear children are living with during this pandemic.

He said, “There’s underlying anxiety that they experience on a daily basis that’s not often visible to us. Even the reminder to put their mask on before they go outside signals to them that there’s something out there that they should be afraid of.”

Several studies support that children’s anxiety and depression levels are on the rise. In Hubei province in China, the initial epicenter of the virus, an online questionnaire survey was administered to 359 children and 3,254 adolescents aged 7 to18 years during the spread of COVID-19 in China and showed “22.3% of youth had scores indicative of clinical depressive symptoms, nearly 10% higher than the estimated prevalence of youth depression in China. Anxiety symptom levels were also higher after COVID-19 than previously reported.”

While Kaye admitted that allowing her children to watch New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefings was perhaps more information than they should have been receiving for their ages, she believes transparency is necessary to reinforce the importance of public health guidelines like mask-wearing and physical distancing.

“Kids know if you’re worried, So, if I try to pretend something big isn’t affecting me, they’ll see right through that. It’s better just to be honest with them so they can understand why we’re asking them to do the things we are."

But parents walk a fine line when discussing COVID-19 with their children, according to Dr. Julia Yang, a pediatrician at Northwell Health in Somers, NY.

She said, “Especially for children who already have anxiety and separation issues, you have to be really careful because you’re either going to feed into their fears or give them some reassurance that they should be at home and socially isolated.”

Dr. Luther (Luke) Kalb, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, agreed, pointing to alterations in two key parts of the brain – the amygdala and the frontal cortex – in an interview with Tower.

Graphic by Logan Schiciano

While Yang entrusts adults to know their children and appropriately judge what to share with them, she worries parents’ personal angst is contributing to potential spread of misinformation. She also suggested a measured approach in enacting safety precautions.

“If children see their parents come home from the supermarket fully gloved and masked, have the groceries sit outside for days and then wash down everything, they’re going to be really scared. People are taking it to an extreme and it’s making their kids more frightened.”

Dr. Amanda LeTard (left), the lower school psychologist at Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY agreed.

“We can’t allow children to engage in our personal anxiety,” she said. “When children don’t understand things properly, they fill in the gaps themselves and they generally do so in ways that are scary and upsetting or not rooted in fact,” she said.

In line with LeTard’s suggestions, Elsbach has kept to the basics when explaining the virus to her daughter – who she said understands the necessity of wearing masks and distancing – but strays away from the discussions concerning death from COVID-19 .

“I don’t think it’s healthy for her to take in how tragic and terrible it really is,” she said. "I don’t let her see news and only recently have I started listening to NPR again, where maybe she can overhear some things.”

Sadly, for so many children, news of death can’t be ignored when it hits family directly. Higgins’ children’s great-grandfather passed away on April 7 from COVID-19, alone in the hospital – a difficult moment that Higgins said brought home the reality of the seriousness of the virus.

The teaching transition

As cases and deaths skyrocket in the United States, schools across the country are once again closing their doors. New York City, the largest public school district in the country, is back online as of Thursday, November 19. On the other side of the screen, teachers are doing their best to understanding of the unique challenges each of their young students may be facing, whether they’re at home or in the classroom.

In her classes, Torres has loosened her expectations and tried to give her students a platform to grapple with their emotions through art and discussion. On one occasion, students decorated masks (behind) with things they loved or their hopes for the future.

But despite her efforts, Torres believes the city has and the NYC Board of Education "really dropped the ball" on their handling of the situation.

"They had all summer to properly provide all students with devices and plan on a cohesive remote learning plan until after a cure had been developed. But instead, they have gone back and forth providing no stability for families and children."

At Hackley, kindergarten teacher Kristen Adams (left) said that she fluctuated between live Zoom classes and pre-recorded classes in the Spring for the purpose of giving kids a break from staring at their screens. This fall, Adams geared her science curriculum towards teaching students about germs and the importance of wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus. She said that lesson is now paying off.

“They’re very, very good. I was definitely surprised initially, but I can’t think of a time when a child has complained about wearing a mask.”

In fact, Adams said one of the hardest aspects for her has been resisting the urge to gravitate towards the children in times of despair.

“When they’re sad and crying, it’s hard not to go up to them and give them a hug,” she said. “Even from a work aspect, I can’t get down next to them and help them hold a crayon or scissors. Being hands-off is definitely tricky.”

Nevertheless, LeTard has noticed a significant improvement in the children’s demeanor since the start of the school year.

“They’re just so happy to be back, to see one another, even if they have to sanitize everything they use and walk through the halls with ‘airplane arms’ to social distance,” she said.

Wood also welcomed the return to the classroom back in early October, but expressed disappointment over the Masters administration’s inability to accommodate teachers' heightened workload and parenting obligations.

He said, “Masters values equity so much, but I don’t necessarily feel that’s been the case as a working parent.”

Masters efforts to bring students back to the classroom while concurrently offering remote options for both domestic and international students have required teachers to be doing double the work at times, according to Wood. Additionally, teachers have been asked to supervise spaces like the gym or the fencing studio, where students now go during their free periods. This all comes on top of the extra attention Wood and other parents are having to provide their own children.

“The load is just so immense. We get our kids to bed and then have essentially another half day’s work from 8 p.m. to midnight. It should be that teachers and staff who have young children learning at home have reduced responsibilities in some fashion,” he said.

Tower reached out to Head of Upper School School Peter Newcomb for a response to the concerns expressed by Wood, but he did not respond by time of publication.

Looking long term

Currently only preliminary data on social and emotional effects of COVID-19 on children exists. Health experts weighed in on the potential long-term impacts the virus may cause.

Yang (left) said, “We’re running into so many problems teaching a child appropriate social skills that they would typically gain from being at school: how to make friends, how to be a good friend, how to navigate situations without mom and dad, dealing with conflict and managing their emotions outside the home setting.”

She recommends that children who are learning entirely remotely try to find a trusted pod of friends that they can safely interact with to maintain some social continuity; though, if current coronavirus restrictions are in place for much longer, she fears young children are in severe danger.

“They might have an inability to have deep, interpersonal relationships because they won’t know how to communicate effectively."

Kalb, whose mental health research has a particular focus on youth and individuals with developmental disabilities, said tending to these children must be a priority.

“We’re going to need to increase our capacity to get these families the care that they need.” He continued, “That can be done by being creative with things like telemental health [online therapy] but also by reducing the stigma so people are comfortable telling others that they’re struggling.”

According to a recent study conducted by SPARK, a landmark autism research project, investigating the impact of COVID-19 on families and children on the autism spectrum, 63% of families reported severe disruptions in services and therapies, 84% of which had been received through school. And of the families that are receiving remote services or therapies, less than half said they are benefitting “moderately well to significantly” from these services.

While the transition back to in-person learning this fall by many local schools has helped, children were met with additional social barriers upon returning. At Dobbs Ferry Middle School, students are divided into cohorts of roughly ten students with whom they travel from class to class, according to Kaye, who said that this alteration compounded Abby’s concerns beginning sixth grade during a pandemic.

“She was very scared about this year – a huge transition into middle school and she had this small core group of friends, but they’re all separated now,” she said. “It makes me nervous and sad, but I really have a lot of faith in the school and the many people that are working so hard to make sure that kids get through this.”

Right: Kindergarteners using natural objects to create the letters in their names. Left: Third graders painting rocks for an outdoor art installation. Credit: Waits May/ Hackley School Director of Online Communications

Concurrent academic challenges are also plaguing young children.

LeTard said that remote instruction has eliminated children’s ability to utilize all five senses during the learning process, including development of fine motor skills like holding a pencil.

Yang added, “We might be producing a generation of undereducated and screen-addicted children. The kids at every grade level are behind in all the basic skills and educators can’t decrease the benchmarks. We’re going to have to figure out a way to catch all the kids up, otherwise we’re going to have a real problem.”

Van Brummelen hopes overarching institutions can find ways to make adjustments.

“We have to think about how the learning that happened or didn’t happen is going to impact what we do in future years. At an independent school like Masters, we have a lot of flexibility, but in the public school, some of that has to come from the state.”

Elsbach said, “I’m also hoping that there will be a lot of empathy developed in this younger generation. The world can’t just be all about everyone for themselves. I also believe in the resilience of kids and I am optimistic that people will just be overjoyed to be able to reconnect when this is over.”

Credits:

Image of Newcomb boys – Marianne van Brummelen; image of Gavin Kaye – Shelly Kaye; image of Abby Kaye – Shelly Kaye; image of Quetzali Torres – Quetzali Torres; image of Astrid Elsbach – Tasha Elsbach; image of Dr. Amanda LeTard – Sharmila Photography; image of mask artwork – Quetzali Torres; image of Hackley class – Mary Stapleton; image of students learning folk dance – Waits May; image of Dr. Julia Yang – Northwell Health; images of Hackley children – Waits may.