Special Connection: Students and families involved in East’s special education program acclimate to online learning

After spending the first month and a half of school sequestered in bedrooms and dining rooms, sitting in front of a screen for hours on end, most students have adjusted to their new schedule — logging onto Canvas in the morning and joining the first of many long calls for the day.

But for sophomore Evie Rogers, who was born with Down Syndrome and is enrolled in East’s special education program, the absence of in-person connection due to COVID-19 has been a challenge that goes beyond simply missing school. Remote learning affects Evie’s ability to learn and practice crucial social skills, jeopardizes her family’s security in knowing their daughter is in a stimulating environment that attends to her personal needs and deprives student leaders in the social skills class of the chance to help facilitate relationships between the kids they work with.

Getting sufficient and personalized virtual education has been a challenge for Evie according to her mother, Jill Rogers, who’s been balancing her role as a parent with a new responsibility as Evie’s at-home para. Jill spends her weekdays managing her other two children — a son in sixth grade and a daughter in eighth — while supervising Evie’s education. 

After the district left SMSD families in limbo for weeks as they plotted out their plan for the first semester of the 2020-21 school year, the announcement that students would begin the school year remotely came as a blow to Jill. 

“It’s what we expected based on the numbers… but I did have concerns about how it was gonna play out in the special-ed world,” Jill said. “What kind of support were we going to have? Was [Evie] gonna be able to [handle] being independent? Would she be able to handle a whole day on a screen?”

After both Evie and Jill struggled with constant stress during the first two weeks of remote learning, Jill set up a meeting with the district’s special education coordinator, two East administrators, two of Evie’s special education teachers and her speech therapist. She decided her daughter needed some modifications to her original IEP, or individual education plan, that all students who meet the district’s disability criteria must have.

Jill refused to settle for an online curriculum she knew wouldn’t meet her daughter’s personal needs, especially since the absence of in-person attendance limited Evie’s exposure to real-world social situations, and felt she needed district support to ensure her daughter’s development wouldn’t suffer.

“That in-person relationship piece is so important to Evie, that one-on-one, face-to-face,” Jill said. “She’s a shy kid, and when she loses that confidence and loses that community feeling, she can shut down, which makes virtual learning even harder.”

In-person connections such as group work and job training are fundamental components to the program, so much so that nearly every aspect of many students’ days revolve around togetherness, according to senior Jack Hays, who works with the program as a leader in the social skills class. 

Luckily, the Rogers family feels that as weeks of online school have gone by, they’re found their groove — Jill helps Evie get on her classes and Evie bounces around her schedule, starting with modified ELA and math classes in the morning and ending with her gen-ed electives. But the highlight of her day comes during her fifth hour when she gets on Webex to chat with her friends in the social skills class where she gets the chance to practice the social skills she learns about with her special education teacher, Emily MacNaughton. 

“[Evie is] able to do small breakout room sessions in social skills, and that has helped reconnect her to her friendships from last year,” Jill said. “It’s helped to build some new friends this year, and that’s been really good for her.” 

Evie and her family aren’t alone in their journey to assimilate to changes induced by remote learning. For Hays, having been a student leader in social skills last year gives him the perspective to compare the in-person atmosphere of the program in-person with its new virtual setting. 

“With in-person, you can make friendships and it’s a lot easier to get to know everyone,” Hays said. “But [online school] is just hard on everyone, and you’re just not making those friendships and connections that you’d usually make.”

According to Hays, while the social skills teachers typically work with students on building relationships, they’re now focusing on new challenges, such as online etiquette. 

“There’s some new things that everyone is getting used to, online social skills like waiting your turn to talk,” Hays said. “In class, you can have side conversations, but online it’s really hard because everyone’s on one [screen] just listening to the teacher.”

Typically, as second quarter begins, Hays and other student leaders from social skills take students from the program on “stepping outs” — activities outside of school like getting ice cream, going to the movies, going bowling or playing games at a park. Though the threat of the coronavirus has put stepping outs on hold, Hays hopes students will be back at East full-time by second semester so these outings can resume.

Not only does Hays love developing relationships with the students in the program through these activities, but also enjoys watching them foster relationships of their own with their peers. However, Hays observes it’s much more of a challenge for students to form new bonds with potential friends through a screen.

“A lot of the kids [in the special ed program] still have lots of connections from last year and still hang out with a bunch of [their friends],” Hays said. “But for the new freshmen, it’s difficult to make new connections over a computer.”

Senior and student leader Ava Peters recounts these stepping outs, as well as creative projects, board games and daily group lunches, as the activities that make up her fondest memories with her friends from social skills.

“We text each other all the time [about] how excited we are to go back to social skills,” Peters said. “We all miss it so much.”

According to Peters, the concept of expected versus unexpected events has been a major talking point in social skills this year as expectations of normalcy shift and redefine themselves every day, according to Peters. While in the past the program instructed students about expectations as they relate to social and conversational skills, this year, leaders in the social skills class have spent a lot of time working with students on the program on the bigger picture. They help students identify unexpected moments in their lives — like quarantine and virtual learning — and practice how to properly cope with and adapt to them. 

Peters says that while every student is different and some have responded to the pandemic and other “unexpected” events better than others, everyone — gen-ed students and special-ed students alike — is struggling with the absence of in-person education. 

When Evie tells her mom she misses school, she’s not talking about walking through the halls of the building itself. In-person school allows her to build diverse connections and practice fundamental social skills. She misses the chance to connect with friends, old and new, the routines that define her day and the people that encourage her to step out of her comfort zone.

But after SMSD announced modifications to their gating criteria that allows for students to return to East in-person through a hybrid plan as early as Oct. 26, Evie will get the chance to join her friends in the special education class for the first time in months — and she couldn’t be more excited.