Impressions from the front lines as the school year ended last week with classrooms shut and students trying to learn from home:
A Buncombe County elementary teacher: “We had some students who looked to me like they hadn’t bathed in a week,” said the teacher, recounting an experience from before the schools shut down. “If the parent isn’t helping them take a bath each week, I know that they aren’t helping them with [on-line] school work.”
A community schools coordinator: “I’m seeing a lot more usage of drugs, mostly marijuana.” These young teen students log-in to the school’s video connection “when they’re high… These kids are smoking an entire blunt – I’ll be honest – and they’ll do it all day.”
A first-grade teacher: “It was like the child had disappeared,” the teacher said recounting the situation of a student. The teacher sent countless electronic messages containing assignments to the student’s computer, to no avail. Then weeks later the teacher encountered the child at a grocery store accompanied by her great-grandmother, who was raising her. The elderly woman had “no idea about computers.
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