PORTLAND, Ore. — This is a story about Portland Public Schools teachers going above and beyond to help one of our most at-risk populations in this unprecedented time.
They love their students, their kids. They threw them a parade two weeks ago, literally stopping traffic, as they caravanned up and down streets near Rigler Elementary in Northeast Portland.
“So, we have the windows down and honking horns and signs…we have a music soundtrack on Spotify going in the background," said Shannon Hennrich, a teacher at Rigler.
Why? Because it was the only way teachers could show their students that they were still there, fighting to level the playing field for them.
"They don't have internet, they didn't have these things. So, we couldn't just hop on a computer and try and connect,” Hennrich said.
Comcast, Verizon, and nonprofits have stepped up to offer internet, but until then, most of these kids had no access from home. And even now, that access is spotty.
Many children of Rigler Elementary have non-English speaking parents working essential jobs in grocery, construction, or as overnight laborers. Those not working in such industries are out of work, out of money, fearing they’ll be out of food, and maybe next, out on the street.
Teachers at Rigler are intimately familiar with the challenges these families face.
“I have a grandmother putting her third grader on the computer. The grandmother has never been on a computer before. She's like, ‘Well, I haven't been getting anything. How have they [the school] been communicating with me?’ I’m like they've been text messaging you. She goes…‘I have a landline’” Hennrich explained.
So, teachers have been mailing, or in some cases, delivering lesson plans door to door.
Living in their one-bedroom apartments in the Cully neighborhood, with six, seven, maybe eight other people, you can then imagine how setting up a quiet space for kids to do school work is difficult.
But now teachers are bridging gaps, and they’re doing it together, connecting struggling families with all available resources. For them, the challenge has moved beyond educating children. It’s now about holding a whole community, some scared and without means, with barriers everywhere, and letting them know: we are there for you.
"We need to be that bridge, but we also need to be good listeners so that we hear what our families need and want. And sometimes they're not going to ask for it because they're so humble. We just wanted them to know and their families to know we're here, you're safe. We're not leaving you," Hennrich said.