Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
Virtual learning a mixed bag for special education students, teachers
Excerpts from article by Hunter Britt and India Jones, published in NCB29.COM
The COVID-19 era has restructured education for everyone, especially students with disabilities. The lack of peer interaction has negatively impacted some students with disabilities, while allowing others to thrive in the digital classroom, according to parents and educators.
The Virginia Department of Education reported a decrease in fall term enrollment for all students, including students with disabilities. Gov. Ralph Northam announced guidelines in June for phased reopening of pre-K through 12th grade schools for the 2020-2021 academic year. The announcement prioritised special education students to return to in-person education before other groups. But many school districts, including Richmond, opted to remain remote since the beginning of the school year. Some districts are allowing only students with disabilities to return to in-person learning.
State and public agencies are required to provide early intervention, special education and related services nationally. Local school divisions offer special programs and resources for students with disabilities, but remote education may be inaccessible during the pandemic for such students who rely on hands-on education, according to Hollins. Disabilities range from intellectual and emotional to hearing and visual impairments, including the deaf and blind, Hollins said.
“Certain populations of students are more at-risk and not able to access virtual learning or remote education as easily as other students, for example, students with disabilities,” Hollins said. “When you talk about students with disabilities, there is a pretty wide group of those students.”
Hollins said her department has provided a lot of information on assistive technology. For example, virtual education may be accessible to a hearing impaired student with screen reader software. “Students who have a visual disability, or blind, or a hearing impairment, or deaf, will require special tools to be loaded onto their Chromebook,” Hollins said.
The VDOE sponsors training and technical assistance centers across the state to provide support to teachers test-driving new technology, Hollins said. Public and private special education schools have a collaborative approach to improve educational services for students during COVID-19. According to VDOE, technology provided to public schools is accessible to private educational facilities.
“Our students benefit from learning with hands-on activities,” Ulmer said. “The teachers and clinicians have worked hard to create work activities that are sent home to our students to complete with their families.” Distance learning plans at the school include individualized sessions throughout the week with the student’s teacher and assigned therapists.
Many educators as well as parents have differing views on online platforms being used for virtual education. Some also question how effective online education is as a whole and said it is a struggle for teachers and students.
“It was very difficult for them at first,” Marshall a special education teacher at Lakeside Elementary in Henrico County, said. “This is such a change for them. Many of them need different things like the sensory breaks, and it’s really hard for them to just sit in front of a computer.”
The primary platform Marshall and her students use is Microsoft Teams. Marshall said that some of her students have done well with virtual education, but the format has had a negative impact on other students.“I have seen several kids majorly regress because they don’t have the in-person connection,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s very good at all, because there’s so many things, so many aspects that you can’t deliver services for,” she said. “Virtually, you just can’t do it. One of the biggest issues that people with autism have is interacting with other people, and now we’re taking almost all of that away and putting a computer between them.”
As a whole, virtual learning “has not been the best thing” for the special needs community because many students are used to teachers being physically present to help them, Gargiulo said. “On a case-by-case basis, it’s been good for a couple of our autistic kids. As far as the rest of the kids, it has been a struggle because they don’t have the teachers right there with them.
Career
How California community college vocational programs have adapted to COVID-19
Excerpts from article by MIKHAIL ZINSHTEYN, published in CAL MATTERS
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 300 people a day got food and snacks from the student-run bakeshop, cafeteria and restaurant at Diablo Valley College. The three eateries collectively let students in the school’s culinary arts program practice their vocation while earning $250,000 in annual revenue that went back into the program.
But when the pandemic thrust California into a lockdown, the student production of pastas, breads, entrees and breakfast items went dormant at Diablo, instruction moved online and college campuses across the state sat empty.
Because of its hands-on nature, career technical programs like Diablo’s culinary program have struggled to adjust to severe restrictions on in-person learning. More than 75,000 California Community College students in the prior school year earned a degree, certificate or completed an apprenticeship tied to a vocational discipline, according to California Community Colleges data.
Diablo’s culinary program eventually brought its students back to the classroom, but the process was long. Now more than eight months into the coronavirus pandemic, this is how different vocational programs at California’s community colleges have adapted to their circumstances.
Lots of problems
Hands-on classes have many of issues to solve to make in-person learning safe.
Colleges spent a lot of staff time planning traffic flows for students, reducing class sizes and changing course schedules. Some also purchased new interactive software to mimic some in-person learning. Others acquired expensive air filtration devices.
As a result, costs for career programs have increased during the pandemic. Because classes have to contain a fraction of the students they normally would, colleges would need to hire additional faculty, but that requires more money. So there are fewer classes overall.
From selling meals to cooking for a food pantry
Students submitted videos of themselves baking or cooking products at home, but instructors couldn’t evaluate the performance on taste. “Culinary arts is one of the few arts that actually requires all five senses,” said Squire Davidson, manager of the program at Diablo Valley College. “You’re not tasting music.”
Students also struggled to purchase basic groceries in the early months of the pandemic. Meanwhile, suddenly unemployed students didn’t have money to buy food, making it impossible to complete the assignments.
That lasted until the fall, when the college allowed Davidson to bring back five students into the kitchen five at a time, down from the normal 25. In lieu of practicing their skills at the campus eateries, students in the culinary arts program are instead preparing 50 to 70 meal kits a week for the campus food pantry. Each kit contains enough food to feed a family of four. Davidson thinks his students are actually becoming better chefs during the pandemic because of increased individualized instruction.
It’s “a win-win scenario,” Davidson said, because students are both activating all five senses again and giving back to the community.
One of students preparing food pantry meals, Soon Gi Hwang, joined the culinary arts program in January after working at a clinic for individuals on the autism spectrum. He’s proud of the meals he prepares for the pantry, especially the meals for Thanksgiving this year.
COVID-19 safety in a big kitchen
The culinary arts program at Cerritos College in L.A. County is larger than the one at Diablo.
Pierini also — like Diablo Valley — adjusted the classroom to allow for pandemic distancing. The Cerritos kitchen, intentionally spacious to replicate the experience of a large hotel kitchen, normally fits 84 students. With pandemic restrictions, it accommodates 20.
Prior to the pandemic, food mixers stood in the rear of the kitchen for all students to use, which would have meant sanitizing the devices for four minutes after every use, “which wasn’t very realistic,” Pierini said. Now, each student is assigned to a station fully-stocked with the equipment a chef would need, like mixers. Above each workstation is a hood ventilation system to cycle in fresh air from the outside.
The pandemic also changed the delivery of goods: Vendors now leave their shipments at the loading dock and drive off without interacting with college staff. An employee brings in the vegetables, sealed meats and other foods and runs them through a four-minute liquid bath with hydrogen peroxide. Only frozen foods are spared. Delivery boxes are left outside. In addition to their normal chef uniform, students wear gloves, masks and face shields when they’re in the kitchen.
Automotive instruction goes partially online
Other programs have invested in better online tools.
Joe Mulleary, the department chair for the automotive mechanical repair program at Cerritos college, purchased simulation software, called Electude, after a trial run in the spring won him over.
“You’re having to click on certain parts of the car, make certain calculations, it’s more interactive,” Mulleary said of the software. The cost was roughly $16,000 for 250 student licenses for one calendar year. The software has helped mitigate the impact of smaller in-person classes.
The pandemic has been a mixed bag for his students. Social distancing rules mean that students can’t work in groups on car repair, so they’re forced to solve problems on their own, which boosts their learning, Mulleary said. But online instruction is a steep learning curve for some students.
With tests and quizzes administered online instead of in person, some students forget to complete their tests or quizzes at home. Mulleary tries to make the assignment flow predictable by scheduling quizzes only for Thursdays, but he won’t allow make-ups. He does offer extra credit for students who complete additional online learning modules.
A dental hygiene program downsizes
Noel Kelsch estimates that the dental hygiene program she runs at Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz purchased $50,000 in hardware and air filtration technology so that students could return to in-person learning in late July.
Dental hygiene students receive an education comparable to nurses and the average salary for dental hygienists is $108,000, according to state labor market data. As part of their clinical hours, students in the program practice their craft on patients from the community who receive discounted dental services while instructors supervise. Before the pandemic, about 3,000 patients would visit the college annually.
“We can’t be face to face and do the social distancing, or physical distancing, in this environment without that equipment, it’s too big of a risk,” she said. The dental hygiene program typically enrolls 44 students but this fall had only 20 because it didn’t enroll a new class. We needed to serve those who we were already committed to,” Kelsch said.
The program installed eight-foot high plexiglass walls around the 21 dental chairs in the lab, tall enough to protect patients and students from overspray while leaving enough of an opening to ventilate and purify the air.
Tough road ahead
Even with the adaptations, it hasn’t been easy for the programs or the students.
The broader leisure and hospitality industry in California shed more than 500,000 jobs between October 2019 and October 2020. In response, Cerritos is encouraging its culinary arts students to transfer into the hospitality bachelor’s programs at nearby Long Beach State and Cal Poly Pomona, campuses that accept many of the courses Cerritos students take in culinary arts programs. It’s a strategy to wait out the dearth of industry jobs and increase students’ hiring and wage potential once the pandemic subsides and the service sector begins its slow return to form.
Additionally, much of the money that allowed for pandemic adaptations like these was a one-time influx of cash; The spending at Cabrillo’s dental hygiene program, for example, was covered by the federal CARES Act money colleges were given to purchase COVID-related supplies. Donations from the local county and American Dental Education Association allowed Kelsch to buy personal protective equipment for students.
But for as long as the pandemic is limiting how many students can physically be in a class, the career programs will suffer. “I’m concerned about the longer this pandemic goes the longer it impacts negatively on CTE programs because of the in-person components,” Weber said.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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