WILMINGTON — Every week Na’Zarius Jacobs’ teachers fill his inbox with assignments, all due on Friday.
Jacobs, a 13-year-old 8th grader at Williston Middle School, gets about three assignments from each teacher averaging about a dozen assignments for the week. Jacobs starts with the hardest assignments first and tries to focus on them late at night when his house is the quietest.
A dozen assignments doesn’t sound like a lot, but Jacob is on his own — there isn’t a teacher in his house to keep him on task. To keep him motivated. To encourage him to work harder. While a good student, it’s up to Jacobs to learn the material and complete the assignment.
He is both student and teacher.
“It’s very hard to be a student right now,” Jacobs said. “You’re so used to looking at your teacher, raising your hand and asking for help.”
Jacobs gets good grades, for students already behind, the Covid-19 pandemic has widened the achievement gap between students of color and white students (part of a nationwide problem, as reported in the Washington Post). COVID-19 is forcing educators to rethink the way they’re going to teach in the future because the classroom is no longer a physical place, but a virtual world where teachers and students alike must support one another.
When Jacobs needs help, teachers are online, he said. So are his classmates, who’ve created a group chat for both academic and moral support. This virtual classroom, both online and in text chains, has become a substitute for school and the community it creates.
“It’s very different now,” Jacobs said about ending his middle school years and heading for high school at New Hanover. “I feel like high school is going to be harder now.”
Covid-19 is widening an already serious gap
North Carolina schools temporarily closed March 14 and then closed for the academic year April 24. While there had been some talk of how Covid-19 might impact schools, the initial closure announcement in March landed on a Saturday, and caught many local educators off guard. New Hanover County Schools (NHCS) had no plan for remote learning prior to the pandemic, according to spokesperson Ann Gibson.
“This is unprecedented,” Adams said. “Everything we’ve done is a trial and error. It’s figuring it out as we go.”
The pandemic is only exacerbating one of the starkest achievement gaps in the region. ProPublica – using data from the U.S. Department of Education civil rights data from over 96,000 public and charter schools – found black students in New Hanover County were academically three grades behind White students compared to only 1.9 grades in Brunswick and Pender Counties. Columbus County’s achievement gap was only 1.7 grades and Onslow County’s gap was the smallest at 1.4 grades.
“Those gaps in this time are widening,” NHCS Board of Education member Stefanie Adams said. “They already don’t have access to resources. That group is growing with the unemployment rate. I think our community is going to look different. The needs are going to go up. We need to address as many as we can.”
When schools closed, NHCS distributed 4,676 devices to students with more than half going to elementary school students, Gibson said. On April 1, the school system launched its remote learning program, established drive up wifi at some of its schools and broadcast elementary instructional programming on NHCS-TV.
“The current situation has propelled distance learning and one to one instruction to the forefront of our conversation,” Gibson said. “We’re gathering significant information about how to successfully deliver instruction in the digital environment, what all of our students need to learn remotely, and where gaps need to be addressed.”
But distance learning for some is difficult. More than 90% of households in New Hanover County have a computer and 84% have access to the internet, according to the latest census data. But dig a little deeper, and that number doesn’t reflect what is happening in Wilmington’s most marginalized communities where the achievement gap is at its worst.
Take census Tract 110, which is a predominantly black neighborhood on Wilmington’s Southside. Only 71% of households have a computer and 52 percent have internet. Almost 50% of the residents and 88% of children in this tract are living in poverty. So, the parents in this area are having difficulty keeping their kids fed, let alone making sure they’re logged into school website.
Adams is worried about this generation of students who not only endured the pandemic, but also had school interrupted by Hurricane Florence. She said that trauma would impact their scholastic careers because it’s difficult to learn when you’re hungry and stressed.
“The world is continuing to move on,” she said. “We can’t lower the bar for those who went through this. We have to make sure we’re acknowledging the gaps. Addressing the gaps and engaging in partnerships to help close these gaps.”
But not everyone is falling behind.
Preserving community in the era of ‘stay-at-home’ orders
The Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington’s (GLOW) Principal Laura Hunter works from home most days, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still leading her school on a daily basis as she transitions GLOW from the classroom to the virtual world.
GLOW, an all-girl charter school dedicated to underserved families, understands the achievement gap and after the pandemic hit worked hard to ease the school’s transition. Hunter and her staff designed the virtual academy in one week with an emphasis on structure. Teachers focus on three things: preparation, discussion, and assignments. Schoolwork doesn’t take more than a half hour per course per day. That was on purpose because many of GLOW’s students are taking care of younger siblings and doing other chores at home.
The results have been impressive.
GLOW launched the Virtual Academy on April 14 and, one week in, all of GLOW’s students are “fully enrolled,” which means they’ve logged on and registered for classes and overall 90% have completed work. Five weeks into the program, those numbers had improved even more.
| Engagement numbers by grade: | Five weeks later |
| 6th Grade – 82% 7th Grade – 93% 8th Grade – 85% 9th Grade – 99% | 6th Grade – 97% 7th Grade – 100% 8th Grade – 99% 9th Grade – 100% |
Hunter stressed the virtual academy is not just an online learning platform — it’s a school.
“We wanted to create a learning environment online that is social and collaborative,” Hunter said. “Kids that are emerging from families at or about the poverty line thrive best in environments that aren’t chaotic, highly predicative and driven by relationships.”
But the biggest shift was in philosophy because GLOW wasn’t built around solitary work on a computer.
“We wanted them to collaborate around a computer,” Hunter said. “Girls, very specifically middle school and high school girls, learn best socially. Collaboration. Socialization. Thinking out loud. Learning in community really speaks to girls’ brains and how best they process material.”
Keeping students and engaged with their work and community is key. Keonte DeVone, a 15-year-old freshman honor student at New Hanover High School, said not having his circle of friends around was harder than working from home.
“One of my favorite parts was seeing them,” he said. “Now I can’t see those people. School is just one thing now. Getting work done.”
Both DeVone and Jacobs are part of the Camp Schreiber Foundation, an education non-profit that recruits middle school boys and makes a ten-year promise to support them from middle school through college graduation. When the pandemic hit, Executive Director of Camp Schreiber Foundation Susie Sewell made sure all Schreiber students had computers and internet, but found despite having the tools many students were disengaged from the learning process.
“Even if they are engaged, I do not believe that virtual learning can be effective without a parent sitting next to them working their butt off to push the ball forward,” she said. “A lot of the parents are still working. They are the bus drivers. Nurses’ aids. Answering phones at the hospital. The only thing that has changed for them is their kid is at home – in theory – doing school. In reality, they’re home right now dealing with a ton of change and new responsibilities, including caring for younger brothers and sisters. Home isn’t always conducive to learning.”
Camp Schreiber is an education non-profit that recruits middle school boys and makes a ten-year promise to support them from middle school through college graduation.
Instead of trying to replicate school, Schreiber students log in three times a week to attend “Schreiber MasterClass” taught by the group’s college alumni. Topics range from networking and financial planning to living with a growth mindset and email etiquette. The goal is to keep them engaged and connected.
“I am trying to spark intellectual curiosity,” she said. “I don’t have a solution. I do think they are falling behind. They were always falling behind. (But) If they can come out of the other side of this with a real interest in learning something, that’s a win.”
And maybe that interest will help close the gap.
Despite the obstacles, some educators and students, like DeVone, think distance learning will help students handle the independence of college.
“It gives our girls a stronger chance of success at the university setting because now they’re getting what life is like at current higher education institutes,” Hunter said. “Our kids are going to walk into the university setting with the skill set they need to be successful.”
Kevin Maurer is a journalist and author. He is currently the Director of Community Engagement at Cape Fear Collective.
