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Comic Relief

Comic strips or books are very useful to help the learning of French, whether they are used in class with a teacher or read at home. This type of literature is very motivating and helps students understand and learn authentic French, based on direct speech via dialogues between fictional characters.

The texts are short, straightforward, and striking, which help with motivation.

Plus, the images give clues about the meaning of the dialogue and the plot.

When one adds to that the fact that comic books are full of sociocultural references and their characters are part of the cultural heritage of the French speakers, they start looking like ideal teaching materials.

It is worth pointing out that comics are especially important in the French-speaking culture, where they are considered a legitimate art form. France has the largest comic market in the world after the U.S. and Japan, worth about $400 million in 2012. The annual Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême is the biggest artistic festival devoted to comics in the world. Founded in 1973, the festival attracts 250,000 visitors, and there are smaller festivals every weekend all over the country.

The bande dessinée (often called BD) is widely accepted as the “ninth art”—a term coined in the 1960s. It has been enshrined as such in the Cité Internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l’Image in Angoulême, a cultural center that includes a museum, the Musée de la Bande Dessinée, a specialized library, a bookstore, and a cinema. The museum is designated as a musée de France, putting it in the same category as the Louvre.

Everything began in 1929 with the creation of Tintin by Hergé and the birth of a Franco-Belgian school of the comic book during the Second World War. The French-speaking city of Brussels lists this art form extensively among its tourist attractions. Characters from Belgian comic strips were drawn by their illustrators on the facades of buildings, and guided tours are organized to discover these majestic frescos. One can also visit Le Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée.

Famous Comics of the French-Speaking World

  • Tintin is the Belgian comic strip hero par excellence. His adventures as a reporter are fascinating for analyzing the evolution of representations over time. Teachers can use Tintin with teenagers, young adults, and adults.
  • Blake et Mortimer are spy comic strips that French teachers can study with young adults and adults.
  • Les Schtroumpfs (the Smurfs) are blue tiny characters who live in mushrooms and fear the mean Gargamel. This comic strip is great for children up to the age of twelve.
  • Boule et Bill is also a Belgian creation. Boule is the master and friend of Bill, a cocker spaniel. The latter does not speak but is always able to communicate. It is a nice comic strip for children up to the age of twelve.
  • Lucky Luke is the creation of a Franco-Belgian collaboration. Lucky Luke is a lonely Western cowboy who will fascinate teenagers, young adults, and adults.
  • Spirou et Fantasiois another Franco-Belgian comic. The eponymous characters are reporters who try to save the world by stopping gangsters, crazy scientists, and dictators. It is suitable for children up to the age of twelve.
  • Astérix is a French creation. The character was created in 1949 by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. The humorous adventures of Astérix are about the inhabitants of a small Gallic village who do everything to resist the invasion of the Romans. Astérix is entertaining for everyone and so important in French culture that he rivals Mickey Mouse with his own theme park—Parc Astérix in Plailly, Oise, in Northern France.

In Practice

Comics are an excellent basis for class discussions. A French teacher can choose different approaches: the intercultural approach, the chronological one to compare two specific moments in time, the artistic one to analyze the complementarity of the image and the text… And, during discussions, classes can question if humor is able to cross cultural and linguistic boarders.

The projects that teachers can offer in class are numerous. The most obvious project is the creation of a comic strip in class. In small groups, students can discuss (in French) the following themes:

  • The plot
  • The profile of the different characters
  • The appearance of the characters
  • The dialogues
  • The settings
  • The colors
  • The atmosphere…

This project can involve all students, using each person’s different skills. They can decide to draw or they can use specific websites which are made to create comic strips.

Most of these comic strips became cartoons, animated movies, or movies. It can be good to compare the comic strips to their adaptations.

As a conclusion, comic strips are fantastic instructional materials. Teachers and students are not likely to be bored or watch the clock during French class!

Emmanuelle Amrein Franks has 15 years of experience teaching English, French, and Spanish, with a master’s degree in French as a second language. She began her American career as a French teacher at Alliance Française in Pasadena, California, and as a Spanish instructor at Louis Vuitton. She is also a DELF-DALF examiner, a translator (English–French), and the copywriter for https://kitdesurviecalifornie.wordpress.com/—a website for French speakers or francophiles who are interested in visiting California.

Online-Only International Students Must Leave US

Male student with backpack and mask standing out in the cold.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced modifications today to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) stating that “nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the U.S. The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States. Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”

At schools offering in-person classes, nonimmigrant F-1 students can stay in the U.S. under existing federal regulations. Eligible F students may take a maximum of one class or three credit hours online.

Nonimmigrant F-1 students at schools adopting a hybrid model will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online, but these schools must certify to SEVP that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.

The above exemptions do not apply to F-1 students in English language training programs or M-1 students pursing vocational degrees, who are not permitted to enroll in any online courses.

Nonimmigrant students within the U.S. are not permitted to take a full course of study through online classes. If students find themselves in this situation, they must leave the country or take alternative steps to maintain their nonimmigrant status such as a reduced course load or appropriate medical leave.

Due to COVID-19, SEVP instituted a temporary exemption regarding online courses for the spring and summer semesters. This policy permitted nonimmigrant students to take more online courses than normally permitted by federal regulation to maintain their nonimmigrant status during the COVID-19 emergency.

F-1 nonimmigrant students pursue academic coursework and M-1 nonimmigrant students pursue vocational coursework while studying in the U.S.

Solutions-Based Nonprofit Offering Next-Generation Fellowship Program for Educators

mindSpark Learning (mSL), a Denver-based national nonprofit, has announced the launch of mSL futureS, a 10-month next generation educator fellowship program. mSL futureS is designed to prepare educators to accept and embrace ambiguities through free resilience and futures thinking training. The first trimester begins July 15. 

Participants must register in teams of three to five classroom educators to create their fellow group. Over the course of three trimesters, these fellow groups will work with a cohort of 20 peers to develop mental pathways to prepare for the 2020-2021 school year and beyond.

During the first trimester, mSL futureS fellows will learn to develop and understand their role as Educator Futurists. The second and third trimesters involve solving problems that are relevant to their organization and iterating solutions. Each fellow group will develop a portfolio presentation detailing their experiences, challenges and outcomes at the conclusion of the fellowship. 

“There is no better time to reimagine education and educators are uniquely positioned to drive innovation and create solutions leading to an education system that is better than the one we left behind before the pandemic,” said mindSpark Learning CEO Kellie Lauth. “We’re thrilled to launch mSL futureS as a way to shift educator mindsets to include futures thinking, while reinforcing resilience and empathy.”  For more information and to register, visit https://www.mymindsparklearning.org/msl-futures.

Bringing a Dying Language Back to Life

It is unlikely that many of his grade-school classmates would have predicted that Sunn m’Cheaux would grow up to be a Harvard instructor.

“I remember being humiliated in elementary school, because I sounded different from the other kids. I was a Gullah-speaking kid in an English-speaking class. I was a fish out of water,” the artist, activist, and social commentator told a roomful of Cambridge seventh graders recently.

“That memory has always stuck with me. Like that song [‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”], ‘You say tomato’? Well, I said ‘de-mayda,’ not ‘tomahto,’ but I was corrected, disrespected, while the latter was accepted. Which is why I now teach Gullah at Harvard University, to see that Gullah is accepted and Gullah/Geechee people respected.”

M’Cheaux, an instructor in the African Language Program at Harvard, worked with students at Vassal Lane Upper School in Cambridge, teaching them the origin of his native tongue.“

The Gullah language is a creole, the result of essentially taking multiple existing languages and mashing them all up into one,” he said. “Mix in some other elements indigenous to the Sea Islands and surrounding areas, and you have a whole new language. That in a nutshell is Gullah.”

Gullah, or Geechee, was created by enslaved people brought from West Africa to Charleston, South Carolina, who needed a common language to communicate. It allowed them to speak freely, by way of encoded speech, in the presence of those holding them in bondage. That code-speak evolved into a language of its own, indigenous to the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which extends along the coast of the south-eastern U.S.

M’Cheaux was working with the students through Harvard’s Project Teach program, which helps local seventh graders see themselves as college bound, showing them that college can be an affordable, accessible, and attainable opportunity. (Research out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education has shown that middle school is when students begin to envision themselves going—or not going—to college.) The program works to expose students to examples of some typical and some atypical courses and acknowledges that college can be different things to different people.

For m’Cheaux, this has been a lifelong journey. Born into a rural, impoverished family in Charleston, m’Cheaux did not learn to speak English until he was bused to another town midway through elementary school. Although he became fluent in his second language, he says he never strayed far from his Geechee roots.

M’Cheaux is the first and so far only instructor of Gullah at Harvard. He says he is honored and humbled to be there, but knows he carries the responsibility of sharing the language and history of his people with a broader audience. His lessons build upon the groundbreaking work that Harvard graduate Lorenzo Dow Turner, MA 1917, started decades ago.

“We really want to encourage a student’s innate curiosity,” said Joan Matsalia, associate director of Public School Partnerships at Harvard. “We want to show them that the subjects many people end up studying in college aren’t necessarily the things they imagined they’d study. College has something for everyone. Sunn, and his course on Gullah, is a perfect example of how important it is to follow your area of interest. Get excited about what you’re curious about, and the rest will come.”

According to m’Cheaux, “Gullah is an oratory language passed down by people who were not academics. The language came into existence from people who did not go to school. They were literally banned from going to school—and threatened with death if they were educated. But ultimately what ended up happening to get Gullah recognized was that an academic [Turner] did the research and broke it down to show its connections to African languages.”

What Turner discovered about Gullah was that it was not just broken English, nor a sign of unintelligence. “There is something quite intelligent happening here. Something complex happening here,” m’Cheaux said in summarizing Turner’s research.

The origin may indeed be complex, but evidence of the language is far more prevalent than many realize. Students were surprised to learn that many common words or phrases are actually rooted in the Gullah language: yam (sweet potato), bubba (brother), gumbo (okra). Georgia, home of the Sapelo Island Geechees, is nicknamed the Goober State for its mass production of peanuts—and guba (goober) is the Gullah/Geechee word for peanut.

Probably the most recognizable Gullah word is kumbaya. The song of the same name has spiritual origins, as it is a Gullah prayer. “Kumbaya”—or “come by here, my Lord, come by here”—was originally a “shout song” or “work holler” used as a meditation, a way for workers to mentally cope with the task at hand.

“I thought it was really interesting that the language that we speak every day has so much Gullah influence in it,” said seventh grader Eman Abdurezak. “I think it’s important that people are teaching about it because people need to be aware of and help preserve it. I really enjoyed singing ‘Kumbaya’ together and learning about what it actually meant. I never knew.”

“Ancestors who created the language were trying to not only communicate with words and ideas, but also trying to figure out how to preserve their sense of self,” said m’Cheaux. “That’s how Gullah came into existence.”

“Some among us feel like if we decode our language, teach Gullah to those who do not live it, it will be diluted or die,” he said. “Indeed, the entrance of outsiders has seldom been in our best interest. Still, I believe we Gullah/Geechee people are at a juncture where sharing our language, culture, and contributions with others is integral to keeping those things alive.”

M’Cheaux said he was thrilled to be able to share his love of the language and its origins with the students, who learned and practiced saying Gullah phrases and sang along to traditional Gullah songs.

“I really want to encourage you all to be excellent in at least one thing. It doesn’t really matter what that thing is,” m’Cheaux said. “Learn how to balance a spoon on your nose… you’ll start thinking about how it’s staying on your nose. Gravity? Weight distribution? Now suddenly you’re curious about physics.

“You may not know that’s what it is at the time—but you will,” he said. “So, pick a thing, and that thing will be a seed that grows. Your excellence is not something that needs to be defined by someone else. Be great at anything and that will open the door to everything.”

Brigid O’Rourke is a Harvard correspondent.

Congress Urged to Enact Antiracist Education Policies

Group of multi-ethnic little kids raising their hands in happiness in a classroom

In light of recent demands for racial justice, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, UnidosUS, and the National Women’s Law Center along with hundreds of other civil rights and education organizations, have written to Congress to again urge decision makers to enact antiracist education policies. Such steps are needed to support the educational success of historically marginalized students, including Black students and other students of color, Native students, students with disabilities, LGBTQ students, religious minorities, sexual assault survivors, and immigrant students, in PK-12 and higher education spaces.

The letter included the civil and human rights community’s policy recommendations for achieving justice and equal opportunity in education, noted below:

Civil Rights Principles for Safe, Healthy, and Inclusive School Climates, signed by 295 organizations, calls for Congress and PK-12 institutions to:

  • Ensure rights of students
  • Encourage schools to implement comprehensive and supportive discipline practices
  • Address childhood trauma
  • Enhance protections against harassment and discrimination in school
  • Ensure accountability through accurate and comprehensive data collection
  • Invest in school infrastructures that support positive school climates
  • Eliminate school-based law enforcement
  • Eliminate threats to students’ health and safety

In collaboration with members of the Higher Ed Civil Rights Coalition, The Civil Rights Principles for Higher Education, endorsed by 56 organizations,identifies fundamental elements of a higher education system that advances equity and protects students’ civil rights. The principles urge decision makers to push for:

  • Civil rights enforcement
  • Access
  • Persistence and completion
  • Affordability
  • Data
  • Accountability
  • Exclusion of for-profits
  • Protection for student loan borrowers
  • Safe campus climate
  • Investment in HBCUs and MSIs

“As we see support grow for transformative change to dismantle White supremacy, the coalition’s principles are key to ensuring positive educational experiences for Black students and other students who are too often marginalized both in the school setting as well as in the world. We hope that these principles and policy recommendations will offer policy leaders a path to supporting and protecting marginalized students and ensuring they have the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive,” said the letter, which is available here.

Jul. 6 is the deadline for HACU Scholarship Program applications

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) is accepting applications for its scholarship program until 11:59 p.m. CST on July 6.

Applications are open for the following scholarships:

The Kia Motors America, Inc. STEAM Scholarship

  • Must be currently enrolled full-time as a sophomore, junior or graduate student at a four-year HACU-Member institution in the U.S. or Puerto Rico
  • 3.0 GPA
  • Majors: Sciences – Biology, Chemistry, Pre-Medicine, Physics, Applied Sciences, Material Sciences; Technology – Aeronautics, Automotive Sciences, Computer Sciences, Mechanical Sciences, Technical/Vocational; Engineering – Applied, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Industrial, Mechanical; Arts – Design, Graphics, Architecture, Fashion, Fine Arts Studio, Motion Pictures/Television; Entertainment Arts; Math – Math, Applied Math, Statistics
  • U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident
  • First generation students strongly encouraged to apply

Café Bustelo El Cafe Del Futuro Scholarship

  • Must be currently enrolled full-time undergraduate or graduate student at a four-year HACU-Member institution in the U.S. or Puerto Rico
  • Open to ALL Majors
  • Latino Descent
  • 800 word essay: Describe how your Latino heritage, family and the community in which you grew up have impacted your desire and motivation to obtain a college degree. Additionally, describe what you intend to accomplish with your degree and how you will give back to your community.

Oracle Corporation Scholarship

  • Must be currently enrolled full-time undergraduate student at a two-year or four-year HACU-Member institution in the U.S. or Puerto Rico
  • 3.0 GPA
  • Open to ALL majors
  • U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident

For more information or to apply for a scholarship, visit https://www.hacu.net/hacu/Scholarships.asp.

Translators without Borders Combats Infodemic with Language Resources

Translators without Borders (TWB), a non-profit organization that offers language and translation support to agencies around the world, is offering free language resources during the pandemic.

“COVID-19 has triggered a global response by governments, aid agencies, and health workers. The pandemic is fueled by what the WHO calls an ‘infodemic.’ People aren’t getting enough reliable, accurate and timely information that they can understand and use to best protect themselves,” said TWB in a statement on their website.

In an effort to address these challenges, TWB is offering:

  • Translations
    TWB is working with partners to translate critical public-facing content into languages and formats that more people can understand. For live data on the scale of their translation work and the number of languages supported, visit their COVID-19 translations page.
  • Language data and mapping
    TWB is developing maps that visualize languages and literacy levels globally, to help guide COVID-19 communications. See their interactive language map here.
  • Social media monitoring
    To help public health experts stop the spread of rumors and inaccurate information, TWB is monitoring COVID-19-related social media conversations in multiple languages. Learn more at their blog.
  • Multilingual glossary for COVID-19
    TWB is developing a multilingual, plain-language glossary of key COVID-19 terminology to support clear, consistent public information. Visit their growing COVID-19 multilingual glossary here.

For more information about TWB’s global response to COVID-19, or to learn how you can donate or volunteer, visit https://translatorswithoutborders.org/covid-19.

Supreme Court Expands State Funding for Religious Schools

Open Bible with American flag in the background

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling penned by Chief Justice Roberts, has deemed that a Montana state tax credit program that directed money to private schools could not exclude religious schools.

“A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion with the support of the other four conservative justices.

In dissent, Justice Breyer, wrote: “If, for 250 years, we have drawn a line at forcing taxpayers to pay the salaries of those who teach their faith from the pulpit, I do not see how we can today require Montana to adopt a different view respecting those who teach it in the classroom.”

While Justice Sotomayor in her dissent, claimed that the decision was “perverse.” “Without any need or power to do so, the Court appears to require a State to reinstate a tax-credit program that the Constitution did not demand in the first place,” she wrote.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos applauded the ruling, “Today’s decision is a historic victory for America’s students and all those who believe in fundamental fairness and freedom. Each and every student needs the freedom to find their education fit, and today the Highest Court in the Land has protected that right by ensuring that families can use taxpayer funds to choose schools that match their values and educational goals, including faith-based schools.”

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called the decision “a seismic shock that threatens both public education and religious liberty.”

“Never in more than two centuries of American history has the free exercise clause of the First Amendment been wielded as a weapon to defund and dismantle public education. It will hurt both the 90 percent of students who attend neighborhood public schools, by siphoning off needed funds, and, in the long term, those who attend religious schools by curtailing their freedom with the accountability that comes with tax dollars,” continued Weingarten, who also warned that, “the financial backers of this case will now use it to open the floodgates to litigation across the country.”

“I hope the court and the plaintiffs understand that by enabling this encroachment on religious liberty, they are also opening up religion to state control and state interference. With public funding comes public accountability. Upending the carefully constructed balance of free exercise and separation of church and state not only undermines public education, it is a grave threat to religious institutions and organizations,” added Weingarten.

National Education Association president, Lily Eskelsen García, similarly, criticized the decision, saying that “the court has made things even worse, opening the door for further attacks on state decisions not to fund religious schools.”

Early Learning Programs Stretched by Pandemic

Young Asian-American boy reading a educational play book.

Early Edge California and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) released their research brief, California’s Early Learning and Care Providers: Essential Workers Who Need Support, which shares results from seven focus groups* conducted with Early Learning providers across the state about their needs and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research shows that the crisis has taken a significant toll on Early Learning providers, including those serving the state’s large and growing population of dual language learners (DLLs); and that Early Learning programs need more resources to continue serving families.

“The results from this research evidence the need to provide more resources to Early Learning teachers and the children they serve during these unprecedented times,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California. “It’s clear that we need to provide more guidance, resources, technology, and support to them to get through this crisis. This pandemic has revealed deep disparities that need to be addressed to create an equitable system that supports learning for all children.”

The focus group findings showed that providers are committed, resilient, and doing their best, despite facing considerable challenges during this time. Many providers are finding creative and flexible ways to support children’s learning. Even staff who are no longer getting paid due to program closures or who are being furloughed reported that they check in regularly with families and children and help as they can. And communication with families goes beyond providing learning resources or ideas for the children—it also includes helping families find food, access physical and mental health supports in the community, and navigate technology.

Providers are also making extra efforts to connect with DLL families, but supporting the learning of DLL children was noted as a particular challenge. “Engaging children under 5 in distance learning experiences is no small task,” explained Dr. Rebecca Bergey, senior researcher at AIR, “but ensuring effective learning opportunities for DLLs over Zoom is a real challenge. Providers need more guidance on distance learning for all.”

Limited, delayed, and changing guidance has left providers to figure out things on their own.

“We’re in the dark about what we’re supposed to be doing,” said one focus group participant.

Providers also indicated that the COVID-19 crisis has taken a significant financial toll on their programs and that many are struggling to get the basic supplies they need for their young students.

Based on the feedback from these focus groups, Early Edge and AIR recommend the following actions:

  1. Continue to fund state-contracted programs.
  2. Support home-based care through local and statewide networks.
  3. Support private programs with guidance and access to resources.
  4. Provide guidance for all programs on how to operate in the new context.
  5. Ensure all programs and families have access to technology and resources to meet basic needs.
  6. Share distance learning resources with all programs.
  7. Help programs better support DLLs in distance learning.
  8. Capitalize on connections with families to strengthen engagement.
  9. Share resources with DLL families to promote home language development.
  10. Support Early Learning providers as people.

To learn more about these recommendations and other findings from the focus groups, see the report at the following link: https://bit.ly/3fSeqNY

*To further understand the challenges faced by early educators and caregivers, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Early Edge California conducted seven focus groups in May 2020 with 32 Early Learning providers (including administrators, teachers, and caregivers) who work in a variety of settings (school-based; center-based; Head Start; State Preschool; family childcare centers; and family, friend, and neighbor care) across the state. Most providers from center- and school-based programs, whether publicly funded or private-pay, told us they were closed for the direct provision of on-site care while the state was under stay-at-home orders.

Teaching in the Atolls with no Virus Count

Welcome to CMI. 

Our in-class classes never stopped. Things are the same. We waited and waited, then the virus never came.

Walking around here, living life, nothing is different from before. I live in what usually seems like an alternate reality anyway—a piece of linguini in the middle of the Pacific that, in many places, you can walk across in less than a minute. 

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a country of 58,000 composed of 29 coral atolls. Majuro is the capital and another atoll, Kwajelein, is home to a U.S. military base.

The College of the Marshall Islands is the only college based in the country. The University of the South Pacific has a presence here, but is a Fijian university operating in nine countries across the Pacific. CMI is a small school, with about a thousand students a semester. 

I started teaching English here in January 2020 and I remember one of the things that entertained me those first couple of weeks was: what if this coronavirus becomes a pandemic and I wind up stuck on this island in the middle of nowhere while everyone else is forced to quarantine? Now wouldn’t that be crazy? 

After midterms, as everything was shutting down around the world, the president of the college held a faculty meeting in the old library. She said we would be moving all the classes online the following week. Judging by the reaction of many veteran instructors she may as well have just said that on Monday students would need to be able to fly. 

A person on Kwajalein Atoll was a coronavirus PUI (Person Under Investigation). The college was closing its face-to-face classes. Since they now saw the question as when not if, this potential case just made the matter even more pressing.

IT scrambled to figure out a way to get the students internet access. Like other countries with low internet penetration (much of the U.S. included), going online was not immediately feasible for much of the population. Too large a majority simply does not have internet access at home. Exact numbers are hard to come by but going by information from the National Telecommunications Authority and the colleges own IT department, most homes lack internet. I also asked an internet installation worker what he thought the numbers were. He said far below half the people on the atoll have it. 

My last job was at a community college in Lee County Alabama, which faces a similar issue. Majuro is not that different from the rural communities we served. There are crushed remains of salvaged-wood-and-wire chicken coops and rust-stained, overgrown playgrounds. There are buildings made of tin, found objects and tarps.

A person who might think that their state is not like that in parts as well has not gone off their rarefied path. Those used to college-town living see this as impoverished, foreign. Those who have spent time in the rest of the country, in towns abandoned by industry or razed by fentanyl and methamphetamine, will not see that difference. The life-expectancy here, 65, may seem low but is higher than many places in the U.S.

In 2019 the FCC estimated 21% of people do not have internet access in the U.S. For Black and Hispanic people that percentage is higher than White and Asian. 

Unlike other low-income, low-internet-penetration areas and countries, however, COVID did not come here. 

The Monday after the meeting we were supposed to start entirely online. I prepared and trained the students for two full classes in computer labs. Monday came, however, and we did not make the switch. We were all back in school. The order had been changed. I heard from some coworkers that it was going to be an impossible transition for the students. 

I learned that week that the Person Under Investigation tested negative for coronavirus. As the person had been just PUI, not a real case, and it seemed that was not the main reason we were going online, there was confusion. 

I kept my classes online. News came that the country was going on lockdown. Nobody was allowed in, but the U.S. government was asking everyone to head back to the States. I was supposed to leave around week 11 so I kept with the original plan and didn’t go back to face-to-face.

Still getting my footing in a first semester in which I had already come prepared to be a newborn teacher for a few months, going online shook everything up again, back to zero. Other instructors also opted to stay online. Attendance and submissions were low. Being a new teacher I was not sure how much of it was from the move to online. I also learned that already there was usually a big drop after spring break.

A few days before my flight my anxiety was ballooning. The students were having a lot of trouble doing the online work. They were not coming to online forums, responding to emails, or submitting assignments. Instead of getting on the flight back I told students we would resume meeting in class the next week, and stayed.

How many of the students were capable of using Google Docs, let alone able to get everything done on the online learning platform Moodle? There had been only face-to-face-based classes here, though some components online and some Moodle use among instructors. Attendance was already exceedingly low, and the graduation rate, while improving in bounds by the Herculean efforts of staff and faculty, had gotten better but still had a long way to go. 

A few other instructors stayed online. They also had some classes in which small fractions of students were submitting their work and attending online forums.

The confusion that the college created by going online and then back to the classroom created further confusion for students who were already facing numerous challenges to maintaining student engagement. Even in its absence COVID-19 has made traditionally low attendance worse. 

There is always a great deal of discussion about why attendance, participation and graduation rates are low. Answers of course vary, but I have never seen a faculty more dedicated to student participation, nor one so committed to the students. When my classes started having the low attendance I had been hearing about I sent emails to students to see how they were and to let them know what they were doing. I hung around the campus to look for students to get them to do their work. One student I even saw across the street on the weekend and chased down while she tried to avoid eye-contact. 

Doing chores for the family often takes precedence over school. Family activities, and gatherings on other islands are given much more importance than tests. Some say students also do not pay tuition so there is not a feeling of wasted money. I have also talked to a couple students who, relatedly, say that they just come here for something to do—hang out, use wi-fi, eat, see friends. Graduate or not, it’s just a thing to do after high school. However, there are mostly incredibly talented and dedicated students here.

Because of the Pell Grants school is free. And it is really free—textbooks and meals even. In the second half of the semester they get a refund for the grant money they haven’t used. Like with its healthcare system here, this sovereign nation has universal access to higher education, paid for by the U.S. government even though these services are not also enjoyed by its own citizens.

All the while the rest of the world went through a monstrous change. Cities shut down, millions went out of work, people were dying by the thousands. On Facebook I saw acquaintances posting from hospitals, getting treated for COVID-19. 

The struggle outside of the Marshall Islands for some of us hovered between a bad dream, tv news about tragedy in a foreign land you keep a step removed from, and people just offshore on a sinking ship you can do nothing about. Video calls with people back home made it a bit more real, but a reality that disappeared after hanging up once an immediate thing came up. 

Here at the college we plugged along as usual. The country itself went on lockdown and did not allow people entry. People could go out, and the only people who were allowed in were some Marshallese high school students who had been studying in The Federated States of Micronesia. They were quarantined in a house on a satellite campus of the college.

I heard many young people here making a joke out of it all. “Oh, do you have COVID? Haha.” A drunk college-age guy approached me to talk when I was on an early-morning walk, laughing, about whether I had coronavirus.

And so we kept going to classes, studying and teaching. I made an effort to wash my hands all the time, to learn to stop touching my face, and to avoid contact with people. But time went by and I slipped back to normalcy.

It is the school so many of us have dreamed of teaching at. We have so many opportunities to make a difference in students’ lives. It is genuinely a great school, better than any other I have worked at. As faculty we take on extra responsibilities and have more autonomy. Likewise the small community college does the same for the country. It built the country’s quarantine center on its campus. We are stockpiling dry goods and planting crops to help if food becomes scarce and the students—a highly vulnerable population—have little to eat.

According to the IMF the country’s per capita GDP is less than $4000. The poor parts of town look like one would expect a country with this kind of poverty to look. There is an unending battle with trash and street animals. Children of all ages run around and play games in public spaces during school hours. 

However, there are also ocean views everywhere you go. You can walk on miles of reefs past screensaver-style little tropical islands, and you can snorkel shipwrecks right in town. Whether I am doing any good here or not, it is a great feeling to at least imagine I help people up the economic ladder. The privilege of doing so against this backdrop is unreal.

Some students have bought into learning online, some improved their scores, some didn’t. Sending emails and tracking them down has gotten some better grades, as has hanging around school ten hours a day and on holidays in case a student wants help. I would not have gone so far out of my way for the privileged kids of millionaires and billionaires, students that I have had at other schools. I am not proud of that. In the future when the coronavirus comes and the whole school goes online other students might commit to distance learning in the same way. 

Education issues from the coronavirus mirror those we face in serving communities which need support. The lessons learned to help non-traditional and disadvantaged students here are not unique: flexibility for submissions, extra time for late assignments they could not submit due to learning a new platform or software, constant availability and prioritizing approachability, normalizing computer and cultural literacy. 

Home internet access during the pandemic has gone from an advantage to a prerequisite for successful and healthy students. The need to go online puts a blistering spotlight on the challenges of leveling the playing field for students that schools and countries were already facing. Quarantine and coronavirus notwithstanding, this is a problem that needs to be dealt with for all schools to serve and adapt effectively. As much as anywhere else coronavirus has given us a critical moment to either decisively address gaps in service of the have-nots or risk losing those students for good.

Geoff Goodman is an English, ESL and EFL teacher who has taught in Seoul, Rhode Island, Alabama and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Contact him at [email protected].

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