Emily Hays Photo
At the Trowbridge learning hub.
When sixth-grader Erielle Wright needed help with remote school, she used to call her mom at work. Now she asks one of the staff members at New Haven’s East Rock Park learning hub instead.
The hub is one of three that the city has opened to help New Haven Public Schools students stay logged into their remote classes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Four more hubs are in the works but have not undergone full safety inspections yet. The city’s goal is to open at least nine that would stay open through the rest of the school year, even once New Haven transitions to a hybrid of in-person and remote classes in November.
Both Erielle (pictured above) and her mom, Theresa Williams, said that her grades have improved because of the hub. Without in-person classes, stumbling blocks in what an assignment was asking for turned into dead ends.
Williams is the assistant manager of a group home for individuals with Down’s syndrome and other disabilities. She has to go to work during the day and had trouble answering Erielle’s questions by phone or videochat.
“If she didn’t understand an assignment, she wouldn’t do it. Now if she doesn’t understand, the staff helps her out,” Williams said. “Her grades have always been good.”
Erielle sits across from her cousin (pictured above) at the learning hub, which takes place in East Rock Park’s Trowbridge Environmental Center. Erielle draws during her breaks and passes notes with her cousin so they don’t disturb the other learners.
Each of the city’s hubs has 20 seats available. On Friday, Trowbridge had only five students present.
New Haven Youth and Recreation Director Gwendolyn Busch Williams (pictured on left) said the program has a wait list. The struggle is getting those who sign up to stay in contact.
“[Families] just feel that so much is going on. They are not checking what they should be,” said city Community Recreation Coordinator Felicia Shashinka.
The team involved in the learning hubs has been emailing and calling those who have gotten seats for two weeks. They are now moving on and preparing to open the waitlist.
It’s the same struggle schools have faced since pandemic school began. Some students have simply disappeared, despite emails, calls and home visits from their school. Youth and Recreation is prioritizing these disengaged students for seats in the hopes that the centers will smooth the obstacles preventing students from logging in.
Internet hotspots sit on each desk. Staff pick up hot lunches from Wilbur Cross High School every day and allow students to take more meals and snacks home.
Conte West Hill student Giana Newton (pictured) had just finished a burger and salad when she learned she had three minutes until her band class. (No instruments are involved in pandemic band.)
Like Erielle, Giana has seen grades improve while at the hub. Her mother said that the staff members keep her on task.
“It’s harder to do online than in person. You don’t really learn anything,” Giana said.
Giana’s brother, Jeremyah Newton (pictured), also appreciates getting help at the hub. A ninth grader at New Haven Academy, he has gotten stuck recently on his SAT math practice. He read off an equation with multiple variables involved.
“How am I supposed to figure that out?” he asked in exasperation.
He said that he wouldn’t change anything about the city program. There are enough helpers for everyone, he said.
And enough helpers for Jeremyah to spend his break beating one, T’asia Newton (pictured), in Uno. The two aren’t related as far as Jeremyah knows, although he has a lot of cousins in the area, he laughed.
T’asia Newton helped run the city’s summer camp as well. She said seeing her brother go to Newhallville-based Highville Charter School online motivated her to apply for the job. Helping her brother taught her how to check on the learners without hovering and how to break down concepts when they are stuck.
“I know they have a hard time adjusting,” she said.
So far, the program has not had any Covid-19 cases or scares.
“Don’t jinx us!” Busch Williams said, knocking on a table in Trowbridge’s overflow room.
The hub is ready, just in case. Across from the overflow room is the hub’s isolation room, where students with Covid-19 symptoms wait for their families to pick them up. A staff member, T’asia Newton, checks visitors’ temperatures and reminds students to pull their masks over their noses.
Trowbridge is Busch Williams’ favorite of the hubs, she said. The hub’s 21st student, Doug, is the reason why.
Doug (pictured above) is a tortoise, or maybe a box turtle, who lives in a corner of the nature center. A glass railing protects his triangle of mulch and potted plants from the rest of the space.
Shashinka (pictured) and Busch Williams leaned on the railing and argued about which picture on a poster of turtles best fit Doug’s species. Doug watched them debate. The students carried on with their studies nonplussed.
Smaller classrooms with more individual students and teachers interaction is of course going to result in better grades. I'll never forget when I was volunteering in the NHPS and one of the classes had only 17 students that day, instead of the usual 24, due to flu that was making the rounds in the school. The amount of distractions was reduced, the students could get individual instruction, and the teacher whispered to me how she wished that every day was like that, because it was so much easier for everyone to get what they needed in order to learn. Maybe after the pandemic is over, the lessons learned from learning pods, remote learning and pandemic related changes in education will help schools become more about what is best for the student and therefore best tor an educated populace and less expensive in the long term impact on society, and less about what is cheapest for the taxpayer in the short term.