May-June-2020-Advisor

HELPING

10 CEA ADVISOR MAY-JUNE 2020

EXTRAORDINARY TIMES, EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES

W hen COVID-19 closed Connecticut schools, teachers turned their living rooms into classrooms seemingly overnight. The transition proved difficult not only for educators but also students and families, with mounting concerns about children’s health, nutrition, safety, emotional well- being, and academic success. From medical emergencies to food insecurity and job loss, the pandemic has had a direct impact on thousands of Connecticut families, and school closures have exacerbated existing inequities—including access to technology and critical resources. Connecticut’s teachers, school counselors, psychologists, social workers, and others have stepped up and joined hands to ensure that the communities they serve continue to have the safety net that their public schools provide. They have done this in small, everyday ways and through extraordinary acts that have grabbed headlines. Read some of those stories here.

Christine Miller, a Broadview Middle School social skills counselor, organizes food donations at Halas Farm. Danbury Teachers Deliver on Their Promise to Students

Stamford Teacher Opens Her Heart, Home to Newborn in Need Teachers often feel the tug—

Before the pandemic hit, many students attending Broadview Middle School participated in the “Backpackers Program” of the Connecticut Food Bank. Through this program, students at risk of hunger over the weekends were supplied food in prepackaged bags. In addition to this program, Broadview created “The Broadview Boutique” to provide gently used clothing and shoes, recycled gym uniforms, school supplies, and toiletries to students in need. At the end of last school year, however, the Connecticut Food Bank ended the Backpackers Program and replaced it with an additional mobile pantry on the third Thursday of each month at Rogers Park Middle School. “We quickly realized that many of our students’ families would not be able to access the mobile pantry for lack of transportation or because of work conflicts,” recalls Christine Miller, a social skills counselor at Broadview Middle School. “We knew we needed to continue with what we called our ‘Friday food’ but had no idea how to do that.” That’s when Alexandra Cruzado Clarke, a new teacher, began marketing the school’s need on social media and created an Amazon wish list. “We set up half of our boutique as a pantry, and every Friday, we called students with passes down to ‘see Mrs. Miller and shop.’ It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming to see students so grateful to get what many of us take for granted.” Pandemic strikes The program continued to work well until mid- March, when it was announced that schools would close. “Alex and I had all of the kids come down, and we gave them as much as they wanted or could carry,” says Miller. “I also gave them business cards with my cell phone number on the back and told them I would continue to help them somehow.” Almost right away, students began texting, emailing, and calling to let Miller know they needed food. Many teachers delivered school- based meals to students, but the need continued through the weekends. “I was sort of piecing together donations, picking up food, and collecting it at my house or from others’ doorsteps,” Miller says. Her colleagues stepped in again. “Teachers knew something had to be done, because for some of these students, school-based meals are practically all they have,” says NEA-

Danbury President Erin Daly, a third-grade teacher at Pembroke Elementary School. “It’s the only food they’re getting all week.” To complicate matters, Broadview is situated near the city’s hospital, with a number of families connected to it, Daly says. “Several students have parents who have tested positive for COVID-19 and cannot get out and shop for groceries.” Miller spearheaded the extra effort to get them the food they needed, and a system was created almost by happenstance. Down on the farm “One of our regular donors, art teacher Jeanette Draper, wanted to get a donation to me and said she’d leave it at a local farm,” Miller recalls. Halas Farm has since generously provided greenhouse space to store food and is putting in hours organizing and disinfecting boxes as they arrive. Miller also set up a special account for donations, with teachers contributing their own money to the cause. The cost of providing these essentials, she says, runs between $400 and $600 a week, and families who are part of Danbury’s preschool program are now being added. Teachers are shopping on their own time to supply fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, and more, and every Friday, after a long week of providing distance learning from home, they get into their cars and drive groceries and items stored at the farm’s greenhouse to the homes of 31 different Danbury families. Each teacher has a regular route. “This is totally teacher-driven,” Daly notes. Teamwork makes the dream work Though Miller has taken the lead on this program, she says coordinating donations and deliveries can be extremely challenging, and she credits many other teachers for making it work—lending their time and skills to keep the effort going. “Every time I wished out loud, someone stepped up. Spanish teacher Lisa McCarthy has always donated regularly to the boutique, and she said it was time to recruit help. She’s now known as the ‘taskmaster’ in our group. School psychologist Carole Nielson has been a sounding board and has also helped put this whole thing together. And now we have so many volunteers and donors, I literally can’t keep track of everyone’s kindness and generosity. Because of them, I am able to keep my word to our students.”

life was at risk. They asked Lira, someone they barely knew but innately trusted, if she would take the baby home with her, at least until their test results came back. She agreed. A week later, test results were in. Although father and son were asymptomatic, they were in fact both infected. Zully remained in intensive care. Praising the quick-acting teacher, the newborn’s pediatrician noted that had baby Neysel gone home, the outcome for the family could have been tragic. Neysel, fortunately, tested negative for the virus. Someone to count on “It was an honor that my student’s parents came to me, that in their time of need, they felt like they could count on me,” says Lira, who spent weeks balancing life with a newborn, her own 11-year-old son, and her husband, who is also working long hours from home. When CEA spoke with Lira one afternoon during that time, many hours into her school day, she had not yet had a chance to eat breakfast, and the sounds of a baby cooing on her arm could be heard through the phone. “I am one of the only teachers in my school who speaks Spanish, so I am working night and day to support my students,” she said. She is also a strong advocate for her students’ families and has created a GoFundMe page to help them. See gofundme.com/f/a-miracle- for-zully-and-her-baby . “Teachers are here for our students, and we’re here for our families,” says Lira. “We always have been.”

from parents, community members, and their own

heartstrings—to go the extra mile for the students in their care, far beyond the hours of the school day or the walls of the classroom. Nowhere is that truer than in the home of Luciana Lira, a Stamford ESL/native language and bilingual teacher who cared for a newborn whose parents and older brother— one of her Hart Magnet Elementary School students— tested positive for COVID-19. While the Stamford teacher was in the thick of adapting to remote teaching after schools closed, she received an unexpected call from the mother of one of her seven- year-old students. The woman, a Guatemalan asylum seeker, could barely speak or breathe. Clearly distressed, Zully was calling from the hospital, where she was in labor several weeks early. With no one else she could contact, she reached out to her son’s teacher and asked if she could get in touch with her husband, who was unable to speak, read, or write in English. Then she asked Lira if she could come to the hospital; she had just been diagnosed with COVID-19 and was about to deliver. Lira immediately contacted the baby’s father, Marvin, and rushed to meet him at the hospital, adhering to the strict six-foot guidance for social distancing. Zully was placed on a ventilator, and her baby was delivered by emergency C-section. Both parents feared the worst— that everyone in the family, including seven-year-old Junior, would test positive for COVID-19 and that newborn baby Neysel’s

Stamford teacher Luciana Lira, along with her husband and son, helped take care of baby Neysel, who has since been reunited with his family.