Support West Berkeley's Outdoor School

The catastrophic impact of coronavirus on the education system in the United States has left many families with children in an impossible predicament when approaching this school year. For families enrolled in Berkeley Unified School District, the only option is distance learning, conducted entirely on computers. For many working-class families, this means the kids are on their own. Distance learning hangs shakily on the assumptions that either guardians are able to remain present and oversee a school day from home, or that children are now suddenly able to be self-sufficient, technologically savvy, and responsible for their own educational success. While this may be attainable for students in high school, children as young as five and six-years-old, whose parents work during regular school hours, are falling below grade level. 
 
Since the start of the school year, we have been working hard to create a structured learning environment for some of the children who are at risk of succumbing to such circumstances in our community. At this time, we need your immediate support in order to continue our outdoor school- a vital and equitable service that provides educational and technical assistance, meal delivery, and school-home communication to Berkeley families whose children lack adult supervision during the school day. This outdoor school currently assists five school-aged children between the ages of six and eleven, and with your help, we will be able to extend our services to other children in need. Your donations will enable the active presence of an on-site teacher and will, also, help us purchase a plastic canopy and portable heaters as well as disinfection supplies so that we may continue to safely work outside through the winter. I am very grateful for the opportunity to assist these families as they strive for success. Thank you so much for your help. 

Further context:

Southwest Berkeley is full of low-income families from minority backgrounds, many of whom are immigrants. While nearby neighborhoods are peppered with educational pods equipped with hired tutors, there are scores of children a few blocks over who have been excluded from such pods, unable to afford additional help and left to their own devices, literally, during the school day. 

I would like to introduce you to a hard-working and extremely compassionate extended family from the Gambia, a country in West Africa. While the twin mothers of this conjoined household are engaged in a rigorous online nursing program, and fathers are at work, the nine school-aged kids (between the ages of six and seventeen) that they have between them would be left to self-govern and get through the online school day by themselves. The youngest five- aged six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven- need adult supervision while their parents focus on providing for their family. 

A volunteer, who has known the family for ten years through the Rosa Parks Elementary School community, has set up an outdoor school to help support these children through distance learning while their moms take the necessary steps to secure a better future for themselves and their families as nurses. In order to help provide consistent support for these kids, I have agreed to come on board as an on-site teacher, five days a week. 

I have been working with this family for four weeks under the supervision of the volunteer and family friend mentioned above. During these four weeks, my role in helping these children has far surpassed the label of adult supervision. Instead, myself and my supervisor serve as liaisons between this family and the school, translating and fulfilling expectations from both sides. In addition to providing one-on-one support during class times and helping the kids keep track of materials and complete their assignments, we provide technological support, teach time management and organizational skills, receive emails from the school, and maintain contact with teachers from each class in order to support each individual child, no matter which grade. So far, we have been able to pin-point various academic needs that each child may have and advocate for additional support from the school, including extra one-on-one sessions with teachers, math intervention classes, and disability services such as extended time on assignments. Three times a week, we pick up Grab-n-Go meals from the elementary school and deliver them to the home, along with extra bags of groceries, when available. During our time with these children, we focus on celebrating their achievements and nurturing their academic skill set, with an emphasis on reading, writing, and math. It has been amazingly fruitful to help scaffold their learning in real time.

We thank you for your help in providing the structure and assistance that these kids need to succeed during the first part of the school year.