A Virtual Switch
Completed December 9, 2020
By Eliana Flores-Barber
Photo By Lisa Gallo
At 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning, sisters, Sofia and Noemi Argueta, slowly get up from their beds. Still in the process of waking up, they make their way out of their room and walk towards the kitchen. The closer they get to the kitchen, the smell of freshly toasted bread, and bacon dance around the air. In the kitchen, they see their mom, Lisa Gallo, preparing breakfast.
Still not fully awake, they go to the living room, joining their dog on the couch. A few minutes later, they hear from the kitchen ‘breakfast is ready.’
Making their way over to the dining room table, they see a display of lightly toasted sourdough bread, bacon, a colorful bowl of mixed fruit, and three glasses of cold water.
The table is quiet as the tired girls eat.
The time now reads 8:30 a.m., both sisters get up from their seats, put their dishes away, and sluggishly walk towards their room to get ready for school while their mom leaves for work.
At 8:50 a.m both girls log into Zoom for their first-period class. With their mom, they have created study areas in their home to give them a change of scenery. Today they opt for their regular study areas. Sofia sits at a white desk next to the living room. On the desk is an Apple computer, a keyboard, and a silver Logitech marble mouse with a maroon ball on the top. Noemi is sitting at their dark brown dining room table. Behind her is a white wall, a silver and gold mirror, and a tall green plant-creating a picture perfect background.
As COVID-19 plagued the country, society was faced with new challenges that centered around one main question- what are the best safety measures to limit spread?
New rules were established mandating a quarantine period and a social distance of six-feet. With these concerns in mind, school districts across the country sought guidance from the county to help them create policies for the upcoming virtual semester.
In Southern California, Los Angeles County was placed under the state’s COVID-19 Monitoring Watchlist which prohibited schools from offering in-person classes. As a result, Long Beach Unified School District announced that all schools would be going fully virtual.
Long Beach’s Helen Keller Middle School, a well-known school for its bilingual learning program and Sofia and Noemis school, informed parents that classes would virtually begin on Zoom starting September 1.
Additional information was shared by Long Beach’s Superintendent Jill Baker in a letter addressed to community members informing them of the school's new guidelines in the 2020-2021 School Opening and Safety Plan. Per the school district's “All Virtual, At-Home Learning'' section, middle school students, in grades six to eight, will attend Zoom classes Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3:40 pm. Students will generally take 6 classes, each one approximately 50 minutes long.
Sofia, 13, has a Snow White complexion, dark brown hair that appears black, and contrasting fair skin. Noemi, 11, has a darker skin complexion and dark brown hair. The resemblance between the two comes from their wavy hair.
Currently they are seated in different areas of the house, with their headphones on ensuring not to distract one another- both sisters are now in their first-period class.
As an either grader, Sofia starts her day with Physical Education. Once a week, her P.E. teacher includes a yoga class to aid students in their stress management which was brought on by the pandemic.
Noemi, on the other hand, is entering her first year of middle school in a unique way. With no in-person classes, the chance of making new friends this semester is harder to accomplish. Her uneasy feeling makes her virtual classes difficult to navigate; still, she pushes through and attends her first-period class, Computers an Introduction.
A week before the semester began, Keller Middle School sent their teachers through a training program to better equip them for online classes. “Yes, there was training. Was it great? No” says Elizabeth Vaque, a history teacher at Keller Middle School.
Disappointedly, she adds the school could have been more proactive in their training by starting it once in-person classes were canceled.
As part of their training, the school district guided educators through a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) section. “They are training us to take mental breaks with the kids and a lot of check-ins. So the day is broken up a little more where time goes to ‘hey how are you guys doing?” says Vaque.
SEL teaches young people the skills they need to understand and regulate their emotions, make decisions, learn how to handle challenging situations, and care for others.
In the year of virtual teaching, SEL is challenging to accomplish considering the variety of personalities, learning styles, and lack of in-person interactions. For Sofia and Noemi, their personalities greatly contrast one another. As Gallo explains, “the girls are in different rooms with very different needs.”
Sofia is outgoing and sociable, she makes time to reach out to friends. “Sometimes we would call each other on Zoom, and be on there for a couple hours and talk, and once we did a social distance hang at the park and we wore our masks but it was just once. Normally we just call each other on FaceTime,” Sofia says.
In regards to interactions with teachers, she is “on cruise control because she has a relationship with all her teachers and knows how middle school is run,” says Gallo.
On the other hand, the introverted Noemi feels lost. She struggles to connect with fellow students. She is navigating the changes of having multiple teachers and using the Zoom platform without the added support of friends.
Both her older sister and mom have encouraged her to reach out to friends via text. “She doesn't really enjoy seeing people on screen, she prefers to see people in person but that's not really an option so recently she hasn't been talking to them,” Sofia says.
Connecting with teachers, as well, has proven to be a challenge for Noemi. As an introvert, she turns off the computer camera whenever possible while in class to limit the number of times she participates.
Reaching out to her teachers for help has not been easy for the young student. There have been various times in which she has struggled turning in assignments and completing quizzes correctly due to inadequate directions given. “She's had trouble with turning in assignments because it's her first year and getting onto Zoom so I help her with those things,” Sofia says.
On one occasion, Noemi took a quiz that required her to use the computer mouse instead of the direction arrows. Submitting her quiz, the results came back showing a failing grade. Worried and confused, Noemi gasped and said she doesn't understand how she failed the quiz when she knew the answers. Looking through her results, she noticed the answers submitted were not her original choices. The changed answers come from a misunderstanding of how the quiz works- using the arrows switches the original answer.
This is not the first instance of this problem occurring, which is why Gallo encouraged Noemi to email her teacher to explain what went wrong and ask for a second chance on the quiz. “I am teaching her to stand up for herself and reach out for help when something happens,” says Gallo.
Nervously, Noemi writes out an email to her teacher.
By 12:21 p.m., they have attended four of their seven classes. They log off of Zoom and close their computers for their lunch break. A few minutes before their break, Gallo returned home from work to have lunch with her girls.
As they finish packing up their notebooks, Gallo walks to each of them asking what they want for lunch. Sofia has a setlist of her favorite lunch options, today she asks her mom for a mozzarella and pesto sandwich. Noemi tends to gravitate towards the leftovers from the night before, today it’s broccoli and rice. Both sisters share a side of Trader Joe’s chili lime tortilla chips.
Not having seen them since the morning, Gallo sparks up a conversation about their classes and their morning. Watching both girls' mannerisms, Gallo notices signs of fatigue and lack of motivation for school work. In loving words, she expressed to her daughters to take breaks or do something during class that would help them focus.
Both girls quickly eat their last bites of food as they have ten minutes before their next class starts.
“For kids having to sit and listen doesn't always work,” says Tamar Brandeis, the Director of Counseling at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Long Beach. “Being able to give them other tools while they're in class, doesn't mean they aren’t listening but many times it helps them listen even more because they aren't solely focused on what's happening on their screen.”
The increase in screen time both girls now incorporate into their daily routine is not something they are accustomed to. Almost seven hours spent in school and a few more hours after school finishing their work, a large portion of their day is spent staring at screens.
In Brandeis's experience, students who take more breaks were able to keep better focus during class. Especially at the preteen age, and during these virtual times, students need to be checking in with themselves on how they are mentally and physically doing.
Both girls are twenty minutes away from ending their fifth period, for Sofia it’s U.S. History, and for Noemi it’s Physical Education. “We aren't in a school set up so it's kinda hard to focus,” says Sofia.
She decides to turn her camera off and grab the blank piece of paper next to her. “Sometimes I draw, it doesn’t have to be anything specific, it can just be doodling and it helps me focus,” she says.
The time now reads 1:59 p.m, for ten minutes the girls will get a small break as they switch from one class to another.
During the break, Sofia walks over to the couch and hops on her phone to text with friends. Noemi leaves the table to get water and walks outside to the backyard. Outside there is a small trampoline which she lays on for a few minutes relaxing.
It is becoming clearer that both girls are starting to lose motivation to get through their last two classes. Yawning, and rubbing her eyes, Sofia appears to be on the brink of falling asleep. Outside, on the trampoline, Noemi appears to be asleep.
“There is a loss of energy, loss of motivation, headaches, and blurred vision,” Gallo says as she describes her daughters.
With five minutes left of their break the girls get up, and walk back over to their chairs. To their dislike, many teachers have mentioned they prefer students log in five minutes before class, this way they can ensure everyone makes it on time and has no technical problems. Ultimately, both their break and social time is cut short.
Sitting in front of a black box-filled Zoom screen waiting for class to start the girls have a tired look on their face.
Slowly showing up on Sofia’s computer are faces of fellow students in her Algebra 1 class. Noemi experiences the same thing in her Ancient World History class.
Humans were built to be social. We thrive off the human connections we make in our lives. We learn to express ourselves, we learn to understand our emotions, we learn how to build relationships with others, and we tend to be happier, explains Claudia Solorzano, a professional therapist in Long Beach, California.
For children, human interaction is even more valuable to their development. They learn to regulate and understand their emotions, what qualities they like in friends, and how to build different types of relationships. With virtual learning, this area of development has changed.
Social-emotional development is dependent upon in-person interactions and its form changes throughout life. In preteens, the changes experienced are more group based, meaning they look towards one another as reminders that mental and physical changes are common occurrences and are nothing to be ashamed of. During these years many preteens learn to open up with one another and build supportive relationships. "At any age, whether it's kinder or high school, kids really need that social interaction with other kids,'' says Brandeis.
Set aside the COVID-19 pandemic, and solely think about the middle school experience. The start of middle school means the end of the comfortable environment of elementary school and an introduction to a slightly rigorous atmosphere. Along with it, are new physical and hormonal developments. Preteens are on a rollercoaster of emotions, which can be hard to manage. Although adults are able to teach kids factual information about their changes, one of the best ways for them to understand their changes is by spending time with peers who are as well experiencing them.
Now as the pandemic alters the structure of schools, students are no longer being given the same opportunities for socialization as they once had. Even with her FaceTime hangouts, the lack of in-person contact is taking a toll on Sofia.“It’s hard,” she says, “I don’t get to see my friends.”
Before online school, Sofia would hang out with friends at the lunch benches and talk before heading back inside. Since quarantine began, Sofia was only allowed to see her friend once in person.
The only constant in-person interactions both girls get are from each other and their parents. Being forced together has proved a challenge at times. “Of course they fight, they're forced to be together all the time now,” Gallo says with a chuckle.
Even though they have their disagreements, both sisters have benefited greatly by having each other. “I'm not alone and I have some interaction with someone, so it's nice,” Sofia says.
Together they have found activities they both enjoy. “We watch movies at least once a week together with my mom, and we also like to play video games, and sometimes we play outside and ride our skateboards,” Sofia excitedly says.
As their sixth-period class comes to an end, their attention span is quickly decreasing. Knowing they have one more class, they try everything in their power to stay focused.
Sofia gets up from her chair and walks over to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water, a useful technique to help jolt the body awake. Noemi sits at the table drawing on a piece of paper while she waits.
Gallo comes into the dining room to check on Noemi who is yawning and gives a soft kiss on the top of her head. She then walks over to Sofia who is trekking back to her computer with her glass of water.
Now on the final stretch, the girls log into their Zoom accounts and wait for their teacher to start class.
The burnout feeling students experience, as history teacher Elizabeth Vaque says, comes from the added on stressors from the school. For the 7th and 8th graders, they have grown accustomed to certain school platforms such as Schoolloop where they turn in work, now the school switched to using Canvas, typically used for college course management.
“Our first two weeks were learning (Canvas), and some fluff work, and getting to know them, and making them feel comfortable, and making sure they weren’t stressing out, and everything was flexible, no due date, no nothing,” says Vaque.
The girls sit through the start of their final class, with cameras on, microphones on mute, and pencils in hand.
Next to Sofia is a window, one she periodically looks out of with a desire in her eyes to be somewhere other than in that chair.
At 3:40 p.m, the long-awaited end of school has arrived. Both girls log-off Zoom for the final time today. It is clear to their mom that the cabin fevered girls are in need of a change of scenery.
Grabbing their shoes and masks, the girls get ready to walk their dog with their mom.
Gallo has placed an emphasis on ensuring her daughters get time outside for a few minutes every afternoon to combat stress.
They walk for twenty minutes and come back to the house so the girls can continue their work. “Right now, this week I have got a lot of work. It really depends if you're not completing your work in class. Yes, there is a lot of homework but not as much as I would get in person,” Sofia says.
Sofia goes back to her computer, instead of sitting in the same place she goes to her room to finish off a Behavior Management Tools Assessment, while Noemi is looking through her school portal checking for assignments.
It is towards midday that slight frustration starts to take over. Once again they are spending the afternoon on their computers. “At the end of the day, my attention span is really short cause I'm just done with it, and it gives me headaches,” Sofia says.
Now more than ever, parents and administrators need to put a greater emphasis on ensuring the students' well-being, explains Brandeis.
The intense changes preteens experience require a unique educational approach. Understanding the biological changes brought on by puberty, which disrupts the relatively smooth elementary school development will better aid caretakers and educators in prioritizing social and emotional needs, particularly during these virtual times.
“There are ways for parents to encourage their children to interact more,” Brandeis says.
Introducing mentorship, wellness, and support programs either within the school or outside of it, will provide students with outlets to decompress and address feelings.
For Gallo, self-care and teaching her daughters to take the time to focus on their needs is of great importance. “I hope wherever they are, they take care of themselves, even if it's in those 10 minutes”
Tomorrow morning, at 8:00 a.m., Sofia and Noemi will begin their daily school routine- an early morning wakeup followed by hours spent staring at their computer screens. It will be another day challenged with the lack of in-person interactions, a challenge that does not get easier as days go on. For both sisters, one thing is certain, they won’t be alone with each other by their side.