Emily Hays Photo
Aiden Palmer, 4, tries on his new backpack on Tuesday.
Preschooler Aiden Palmer wants to go back to school to see his friends.
Although his classes at Augusta Lewis Troup School will be remote this September and October, his teachers have plans to encourage the social connections he misses.
Families like Aiden’s walked away from Troup on Tuesday with Chromebooks, new backpacks and hope that fall remote learning will happen more smoothly than it did this spring. Teachers, meanwhile, are taking the last two days before school starts to make that promise happen.
“We are more prepared this time. We’ve worked out a lot of the kinks,” said Aiden’s teacher, Shandra Patton.
Aiden and his parents, Careene Stephenson and Patrick Palmer, came to Troup on Tuesday to pick up a Chromebook for him. Troup Vice Principal Harry Welfare handed Aiden’s parents a clipboard with paperwork to sign and invited Aiden to pick out a backpack. Aiden hovered over the various colors of bags, which were free courtesy of Dwight-based Church of God and Saints of Christ.
Aiden settled on a blue bag and immediately asked his parents if he could wear it. The bag dwarfed the four-year-old’s small frame as he waited for his parents to pick up a laptop.
Patton (pictured above on the right) emerged from the school building to tell the family Aiden’s laptop was not available that day due to an error on the school’s side. Instead, Patton promised to deliver the laptop and a box of blocks, Play-Doh, crayons and more preschool learning tools to the Palmers’ home by Friday.
This way, Aiden will be able to follow along with Patton’s lessons from home. The New Haven Public Schools Board of Education voted to start the school year this Thursday with 10 weeks of remote classes to avoid spreading Covid-19 between students and staff.
Patton said that she will broadcast her lessons from her classroom so her students can imagine themselves there with her. She plans to collect their schoolwork in person once a week and pin it up in the backdrop of her videos.
Patton’s class is unusually small this year, so these kinds of personalized touches are easy to do, she said. She guessed that the virtual signups and classes have discouraged some families from enrolling.
“Covid’s had an impact. I’m sure the numbers are going to increase when we go back [to in-person classes],” Patton said.
Once Aiden has his laptop, he will be able to see most — but not all — of his friends from his previous year of prekindergarten at Troup. Stephenson and Palmer asked Patton about a little girl Aiden often mentions and learned that she is now in kindergarten. Patton offered a solution for the two friends now separated by their one-year age gap: She would reach out to the little girl’s family and find out whether they would want to exchange contact information with the Palmers to hold virtual playdates.
Aiden then stepped up to his teacher to tell her about his birthday cake. She asked him how many candles it had on it and whether he could spell “four.”
“I got special new books for you,” Patton promised him.
Technical Difficulties
A few other families experienced laptop snafus on Tuesday. Shalonda Mitchell stood in line to exchange a Chromebook that had charging problems, only to realize that the new Chromebook was missing several keys. Two other families ahead of her in line experienced the same issue.
Joe Silva and the other teachers handing out laptops dug into the boxes of new Chromebooks. Mitchell did her second laptop trade within a few minutes and she and the other parents walked away satisfied that they now had functional computers.
These technology problems can be a major barrier for students, Mitchell explained. Her daughter, Sinna, struggled to do her schoolwork in the spring with a computer that would not charge. She would try to use a phone instead or borrow someone else’s Chromebook, Mitchell said.
Still, Mitchell wants to keep her daughter at home for as long as possible during the pandemic. She knows a few relatives and friends who have gotten Covid-19. All have recovered, she said.
“This is scary,” Mitchell said.
The student population at Troup is around 400. The school managed to distribute laptops to half of the students in the spring. The other half either had their own or never got in touch with Troup staff, according to Principal Eugene Foreman.
Foreman had around 200 Chromebooks that he was hoping to give to families during Tuesday and Wednesday giveaways.
Superintendent Iline Tracey has planned to give iPads to younger students instead of Chromebooks. However, Troup’s designated iPads have not arrived yet, so Foreman is giving out Chromebooks to Pre‑K through first graders for now.
By mid-day on Tuesday, Foreman’s team had already given out 100 of the 200 goal.
New York Transplants
Several of the families that lined up on Tuesday had moved recently to New Haven from New York City.
The last six months have convinced Renee Bartoo (pictured above) that she needs easier access to outdoor space than she could get in the Big Apple, so she moved with her fifth grade son, Marcus, to New Haven.
Johnathan Vega moved with his family to New Haven a year ago to get away from violence in the Bronx. He said that schools are better in the Elm City and that teachers are nicer.
“My son comes home happy,” Vega said.
And Maria Charron moved from New York two months ago to find smaller classes during the pandemic. All three of her children will be attending Troup virtually come Thursday.
Charron was looking for a job in New Haven, but when she learned that school would be remote, she stopped her search. She worried that without supervision, her children would fall behind in school, perhaps by an entire year.
“I would rather stay home to make sure they actually learn,” Charron said.
Charron’s daughter, Haneen Al-Rahyyl, was not happy about remote school, however. The third grader does not know her new classmates yet and will not get the chance to meet them in person for weeks.
“It’s a new school but it’s still closed,” Charron explained.
Charron is going to try to make Haneen’s first day of school special anyway. She said that her kids will wake up early, dress up and do their hair, as they would on a normal first day. And then she is going to make them pancakes with strawberries on top.
It's wonderful that so many people are working to get students to resources they need to learn remotely, and that the schools and teachers are working on making sure their students are going to get virtual classroom experiences and social interactions. It will be very important for tech support to be provided for the remote learners and social support for the students with follow up by their teachers and schools to make sure all the students are participating and have access, and feel valued.