The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the childhood educational disparity. After going through two years of distance learning, millions of U.S. students have fallen behind in learning at age-appropriate reading and math levels.
The COVID-19 emergency has led to a massive closure of face-to-face activities in educational institutions in more than 190 countries, according to UNESCO. This was done, at the time, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and thereby mitigate its impact. As of mid-May 2020, more than 1.2 billion students at all levels no longer have classes where they must meet with their teacher or classmates face-to-face. According to UNESCO data, this is causing many problems at all levels of education around the world.
For this reason, Ethnic Media Services organized an informative session where experts proposed strategies to close the gap in student achievement and what strategies to take for teachers, students and parents.
Louis Freedberg, former CEO of EdSource and a veteran education journalist, argued that strong learning cannot occur without emotional closeness between teachers and students. He insisted that the teacher must create emotional bonds that reinforce cognitive ones as well. He pointed out "that there are conflicting elements" with distance education versus traditional forms of teaching. "One was not used to that situation before," he said.
He stressed that the absence of a student-teacher relationship is something that "must be taken into account" because before the interaction was different in the sense that it was more effective and efficient communication developed in an environment in which teaching responded to the "learning needs" throughout the school days that were planned from the beginning to the end: there are routines and schedules for every day inside or outside the class schedule or any rules that apply.
Hayin Kimner, managing director of Community Schools Learning Exchange, a senior policy and research fellow for policy analysis for education in California, emphasized that children "face difficulties" in concentrating, find better behavior in students when they know what to expect in advance rather than being surprised by anything during their daily lives within classroom hours, "even the basics," Kimner notes, as exactly what is expected of their accepted behavior both inside and outside the classroom is established in advance.
"Many children feel lost because of COVID-19; they may miss important events or be traumatized by what others have experienced," along with the impact of social media posts seen during the pandemic. "These students often lose track of time as they work on their assignments without any support," she stated.
Allison Socol, deputy director of Policy P12, Washington-based Ed Trust, said that every day there is a routine that seems to play an important role at home. This, she said, "can make it difficult to concentrate when studying online." He also noted that some students experience anxiety and sadness because of COVID-19, and these emotions "can be distracting to distance learners" at home.
"Learning new things in an unchallenged life can be challenging," Socol said. "When students are at home, there is no one around to remind them of what to do or to bring their attention back to the lesson at hand," he emphasized. She noted that because of this, it can lead to student confusion and distraction when there is nothing else around, as it sometimes feels like they are on vacation.
