Insights From BIPOC Mothers and Community-Based Educators on Loss and Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Rethinking "Learning Loss": Family, Community, and Educator Perspectives on Equity and Learning During COVID-19

Abstract

Working mothers have experienced high stress as they juggle work, health, childcare, remote schooling, and the well-being of their children during COVID-19 (e.g. Calarco et al., 2020), and parents have struggled with children’s lack of motivation in remote schooling and their children’s academic progress (e.g. Garbe et al., 2020), but less is known about the experiences of Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) families. We examine how BIPOC mothers and community-based educators make sense of their experiences and BIPOC children’s learning during the pandemic. Given the discourse of “learning loss” framing discussion of racial inequities during the pandemic, we focus on notions of “loss” that arose in interviews.

In considering the experiences of BIPOC communities our analysis is guided by an ecological (Calabrese Barton, et al., 2004) framework for understanding family engagement and recognizes (1) BIPOC families and community-based educators educate children in ways that go unrecognized in dominant culture (Baldridge, 2019; Baquedano López et al., 2013), and (2) intertwined systems of racism, capitalism and patriarchy shape schools (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and negatively impact BIPOC communities, including death, illness, and unemployment during of the pandemic (Moen, Pedke, & Flood, 2020; Pirtle, 2020).

We use memoing, systematic coding, and thematic analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with BIPOC mothers and community-based educators in one relatively well-resourced but unequal school district. The district operated almost entirely virtually through April 2021 with a limited number of students attending supervised virtual learning sites.

We identify three important insights on loss and education for BIPOC children. (1) Some mothers juggling work and childcare expressed a sense that their children had lost out on learning during the pandemic. A Tibetan immigrant mother said that her children “get more frustrated [rather] than getting better” with virtual schooling and worried that her son had lost a love of learning. These mothers supported their children in multiple ways, and recognized systemic inequities in their circumstances, but nevertheless internalized a sense of responsibility for the situation. (2) A different group of mothers described loss from status quo schooling, especially given limited culturally responsive and anti-racist pedagogy in the schools. One Black mother said that school did not nurture critical thinking or social development, and her child was not always treated fairly. For another, a return to in-person schooling precipitated a feeling of impending loss of an environment where her child had thrived. (3) Finally, community-based educators expressed loss in not being able to educate in a way they viewed as good for children because the activities and lessons they valued were superseded by new roles supervising remote schooling. They were eager to return to youth-development work they did before the pandemic.

Though largely excluded from the public debate about “learning loss,” BIPOC mothers’ and community-based educators’ experiences and insights on learning and loss during the pandemic are essential contributions to research on this critical educational moment and raise necessary questions about the “learning loss” framing that has taken hold.

Authors

• Erica Owyang Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Linn E. Posey-Maddox, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Amy Hilgendorf, Wisconsin Department of Children and Families