Students Roll With Return To Remote

During her second week of her first year of high school, Lana Al Mallak was pulled out of her history class and sent home for 10 days. No live classroom instruction. No after-school club meetings.

Lana left the school in tears.

“I understood why, but I just didn’t want to miss my second week of school,” she said.

The ​“why”: New Haven has begun its first complete academic year with in-person learning since the Covid-19 pandemic began. But the pandemic is not done yet: The Delta virus has kept it spreading. So schools are hustling to avoid a repeat of the previous year’s extended all-remote learning by regularly sending home students like Lana whose classmates may have been exposed to the coronavirus.

New Haven Public School students who have been required to quarantine within the first month of the school year told the Independent in interviews this week that their 10-day return-home journeys didn’t quite feel like ​“real school.” After just getting back to full in-person learning, they and their parents have had to learn to roll with a temporary short-term return to remote.

As of Thursday, 290 individuals have quarantined as a result of Covid cases or potential exposures in NHPS so far this academic year. Thirty-eight are currently quarantining.

Lana spent much of her seventh and eighth-grade years learning remotely while at East Rock School. This caused her to miss out on her seventh and eighth-grade fields trips and school dances. She described feeling excited but nervous to return in-person for her first year of high school now that the school system resolved to make in-school learning the norm again.

On Sept. 3 around noon, Lana was in her history class. She noticed a school administrator calling her classmates out into the hallway one by one to ask them questions. When she was called into the hallway, she was asked if she was vaccinated.

She nervously responded that she was still considering if she wanted to get the shot. Her parents, who are vaccinated, are worried about letting her and her 13-year-old brother get the vaccine because of their ages, she said.

She was told she would have to quarantine for 10 days out of safety precautions because a classmate had Covid-like symptoms but tested negative. She waited in the school office until her mom picked her up.

“I was just getting used to not having to be home anymore,” she said. ​“I wanted to be with my friends.”

She said she is now used to having to mask up, doing less group work, and having to sit in the same seat all school year. 

“You’re not as isolated as you are when remote,” she said.

Throughout the 10-day quarantine Lana received no live instruction, she said.

Each day remote work was posted online with directions to complete by the end of the day. She said the work was similar to the work she was doing in person. Although her teachers encouraged her to email them if she had any questions, Lana didn’t. ​“It just wasn’t as easy to explain my questions in writing. I usually can point to my paper and show them what I mean,” she said.

While quarantining, Lana missed out on attending the Sound School’s Dive Club’s first gathering. The second week was when after-school activities started.

For her first day of remote learning, Lana’s English teacher hosted a virtual meeting with the students quarantined and explained what they were expected to do for the next week.

“It was pretty scary. and I was pretty nervous of how things would work. But after that meeting, I felt a little better,” she said.

Lana described most of her work during quarantine as easy. In English she just had to read her independent book, The Baby-Sitters Club, and the class book Make Your Bed: Small Things That Can Change Your Life … and Maybe the World. She had to miss a math quiz that week and make it up when she returned.

School = Friends

Davis Street Magnet School third-grader Rielynn, 8, said she felt like crying when her mom came to pick her up from school to quarantine this past week.

“I didn’t want to be separated from my friends,” she said.

Rielynn’s entire third-grade class had to quarantine for 10 days starting last Tuesday due to a student’s exposure to Covid.

As Rielynn neared her final days of quarantine at 4 p.m. Wednesday, she sat in her dining room finishing up her daily work. She completed a digital math worksheet on rounding and multiplication, her favorite assignment.

“I was a little distracted today. Some of the kids in class were putting music on while the teacher was talking,” Rielynn said.

During quarantine, Rielynn would get up every day a little after her mom, Monica Johnson, left for work. She’d eat breakfast with her grandmother, then start school around 9 a.m.

Rielynn easily remembered how to log in to her Google Classroom account as she did last year. Around noon, Johnson would check in with her daughter for about an hour. By the time she returned home for work, Rielynn’s school day was over, and she’d help her daughter with any remaining work she struggled to complete during the school day.

Johnson, who is an administrative assistant for NHPS, got a call about the need to quarantine from the Davis school nurse Sept. 20.

Since the pandemic, Johnson has been getting help from her mother, who lives with her. ​“I don’t know what I would I do if I had nobody to help me,” she said.

During last year’s all-remote learning, Johnson had to bring Rielynn to work with her when her mother and husband were busy. She suggested that the district consider offering learning hubs to quarantined students who have working parents.

When schools shut down last year, Johnson worried most about the impact on Rielynn socially. ​“She’s an only child and loves being around people,” Johnson said.

To keep Rielynn busy, her parents did science projects, baking, learned to hula hoop, played family games, and took dozens of walks with her. ​“We got closer as family,” Johnson said.

To help keep Rielynn from getting burnt out while using the computer all school day, Johnson would print hard copies of the digital class work for her to do off screen. During reading times, rather than downloading digital books on the computer, Johnson encouraged Rielynn to read a book from her home library.

To keep Rielynn engaged with her peers and busy, she had had her join softball this school year. Last year Rielynn participated in a New Haven Reads program at Science Park, a youth church program, and a Saturday coding program offered at Davis.

While quarantining, Rielynn said, she sometimes got distracted by her neighbors’ music and other activities outside her dining room window.

Steve & His Parents Were Ready

Davis third-grader Steven, 8, is in the same class as Rielynn. He was more upbeat about the temporary remote learning stretch.

Christina Dickerson-Cousin received the call from the school just before the end of the school day and was asked to pick up her son at the front of the building on Monday, Sept. 20. The school informed her that her son’s entire third-grade class would need to quarantine for the next 10 days out of safety precautions due to potential exposure.

Steve’s 10-day quarantine began the next day. He was excited about it.

Being home in quarantine and back in class virtually is like a vacation from school, Steve said.

His dad, Steve Cousin Jr., said he was concerned but not surprised when told him the news. ​“We were getting phone calls at least once a week about other students in the school having to quarantine, so I expected it was going to happen for us eventually,” he said.

Steve was able to easily make the adjustment to remote learning during quarantine, his parents said.

Because Steve’s entire class is in quarantine, his teacher conducted live instruction for the 10-day quarantine period.

Each day, the teacher provided the students and parents with a daily schedule to follow, including break times. Steve’s day usually started at 9 a.m. and finished around 3 p.m.

This time around, unlike during the previous remote learning year, Steve’s parents are able to be less hands/on during his school day because he is more familiar with using his Chromebook. His parents occasionally check on him throughout the day to be sure that he is focused in class.

When Steve began his virtual class in quarantine, Christina recalled him telling her: ​“I’m a big boy now. Big boys don’t need help logging in.”

Steve said he likes in-person school because he gets to play outside and be with his friends. He likes remote learning because he gets easy access to his TV, games, and juice.

Christina, who is a college professor, worried about how effective remote learning would be for her son’s education. ​“If you do nothing else,” she told herself, ​“just keep them reading.”

“I’m glad he’s getting to socialize more, because that’s the one thing you can’t re-create at home,” Christina said.

Steve’s father said he felt like he was playing Russian roulette by sending his kids back to school in person this year. ​“But we realized that last year was very hard, even when he was at the learning hub,” Cousin said. ​“He’s gained our trust: he does what he needs to and is doing his best given the situation.”

Had Steve’s parents been given the option for keeping him home for remote learning rather than in-person, Cousin said, they would have done virtual school until Steve is old enough to get vaccinated.

“We would have been more comfortable had we been given the option,” Cousin said. ​“Because he’s able to adapt.”

“It heightens our stress by 100 percent every day,” Cousin said. ​“You can always get socialization, but you can’t get back health.”

Christina arranged her teaching schedule this year to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings so she could be back home by 1 p.m. This allows for her husband to focus on work in the afternoons. ​“I changed my schedule in case this [quarantine] happened,” she said.

The 10-day quarantine did interrupt Christina’s and Cousin’s plans to see the new movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, they joked.

Steve said he sometimes struggles with wearing his mask, because it makes him hot in school.

“I’m excited, because I get to stay home and play video games,” Steve said. ​“And I don’t have to wear my mask at home.”

Cousin said his son also often prefers to socialize through virtual formats like FaceTime and Zoom, especially while gaming.

Steve did get a Covid test while quarantined. It came back negative. Steve and Rielynn were cleared to return to school Friday.