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Kyana Hopkins-Thomas, pictured here with her three children, is a history teacher at Paul Robeson High School in Philadelphia. (Jose F. Moreno / Philadelphia Inquirer)
PORTRAITS OF A PANDEMIC
Veteran teacher Kyana Hopkins-Thomas tackles a (distance) learning curve
By Errin Haines
Kyana Hopkins-Thomas smiled as she recalled the last time she was with her history students at Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia, helping them with their projects on Reconstruction and world religion.
Her classes sat not in rows, but in groups, learning to collaborate. They prepared to give presentations that would help them become more confident public speakers. Hopkins-Thomas was just beginning to hit her stride in her first year at Robeson when the coronavirus brought the momentum she’d built with 150 students to a halt.
“I felt like I was just getting the hang of it,” said Hopkins-Thomas, 38, who has taught for more than a decade and is also a full-time doctoral student working on her dissertation. “I had to reorganize things.”
The pandemic is exacerbating long-standing inequities in all areas of society across the city and the country, but perhaps nowhere more acutely than in education. While coronavirus has changed life for all Americans, the crisis has been overwhelming for minority and poor communities, whether they become sick or not.
According to the National Center on Education Statistics, more than 75 percent of public school teachers in America are women — who also represent the majority of caregivers in this country. In Philadelphia, about 70 percent of teachers are women.
Philadelphia is home to the country’s fifth-largest school district, with more than 200,000 students and 342 schools. About 8 in 10 students are black, Latino or Asian; only 14 percent are white. The district closed on March 13 and was initially set to shut down for two weeks, but will now remain closed for the rest of the school year.
The disparities are stark in Hopkins-Thomas’ classroom.
For weeks, she didn’t teach at all: It was unfair to proceed because many students across the city lacked access to either a computer or the Internet.
The school district has distributed 75,000 laptops since the pandemic started, with plans to make more available to students in need. The district is also providing online resources to help parents and students navigate how to use laptops and the online tools.
Still, Hopkins-Thomas estimates that she has reached only about a third of her students, with about 10 who are unable to get online in each of her five classes. More than 20,000 students in Philadelphia have no internet subscription.
“A lot of things I had to stop doing,” Hopkins-Thomas explained. “When this pandemic happened, I lost touch with a lot of my students. It’s an equity issue. I don’t have a way of contacting them.”
She said she has yet to hear from any of her five seniors. She worries about those who may lose the passion for education that she worked to ignite.
Even now, Hopkins-Thomas said her students who are online aren’t familiar with the teaching technology the district is using as a stand-in for in-person learning.
“We were at such a good place before all this happened,” said Hopkins-Thomas, who teaches with the aim of preparing her students for college. “I had it all planned out, where I wanted them to be, what I wanted them to be able to do. I’m hoping that they’re okay and that they're doing well.”
Also on her mind: Her students who may not be safe at home, who are missing the teacher who cares about them and listens to them, who sees them as more than just their grade.
“In the background, I can hear yelling and cussing,” she said. “For a lot of our students, home is not a quiet place, home is not somewhere they want to be, and now they’re stuck there, and I don’t know how to fix that. And that’s hard when you’re somebody that wants to fix things for people. All I can do is encourage them and let them know that I’m here.”
Nearly all of the Philadelphia district's public school students are eligible for free or reduced meals. In response to concerns about food insecurity, 49 food distribution centers are open across the city, and families are eligible for one meal kit a week, with five breakfasts and five lunches per child. The district has distributed more than a million meals in the past month.
For Hopkins-Thomas, there’s also been a shift at home. She is a married mother of a 15-year-old teenager, 2-year-old toddler and a 1-year-old. Days that began at 5 a.m. and ended at close to midnight now start four hours later.
Her teenage daughter, a sophomore, talks to friends on the phone, but is slowly becoming stir crazy. Hopkins-Thomas’ baby was sick this week, which meant a telehealth appointment rather than risking a hospital visit.
Hopkins-Thomas is also grieving the loss of an uncle who died this week from coronavirus in his nursing home in the city. More than half the state’s fatalities due to the illness have been in nursing homes.
For the teacher and mother, some days have felt unbearable.
“There’s a lot of having my own breakdown sessions, not in front of the kids,” she said. “Just to get myself together, then I come back and reassess how we’re going to do things. If it wasn’t for the level of faith I have, I don’t think I would be at this place. I still talk to God. That is definitely holding me.”
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