Cheney Orr/Reuters

Alexa Callander virtually teaches a second grade class for students who are either at home or in a separate classroom as in-person learning resumes with pandemic restrictions in place at Rover Elementary School in Tempe, Arizona, on Aug. 17, 2020.

Anne Okoreeh, a stay-at-home mom in Stockton, California, recalls the “chaos” of last spring when schools switched to distance learning due to pandemic closures. Nobody seemed to know what was happening, and not much teaching or learning went on. But what a difference the summer made. 

The Okoreeh family is still online with the public school system, but two weeks into the new academic year, things are going pretty smoothly. 

“The teachers are really great,” says Ms. Okoreeh. She’s also noticed her 10th and 12th graders are not as stressed and, with free time after school, they finish their homework earlier than usual. Her youngest may not be as challenged as she would be in the classroom (Ms. Okoreeh sits with her during live instruction to help her stay focused), but overall, “my whole experience with distance learning so far has been positive,” she says.

Online education was a bust for many American families at the end of the last school year. Their only comfort was that in-person school would return in the fall. But as schools open around the United States, many districts, including the largest, are starting with either some or all remote learning – the path for which they are least prepared.

Although many districts still struggle to help students who have no access to technology, many have at least taken basic steps to avoid past failures. Measures include more live instruction over the internet; consistent scheduling across grades and classes; a common communication tool for teachers, students, and parents; and a return to attendance-taking and grading. 

“There was almost nowhere to go but up. I think we are seeing up,” says Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Probably the biggest improvement is that more districts are doing some face-to-face teaching online, she says. In the spring, only 20% of districts did such instruction, based on a representative sample of 500 districts studied by her center. This fall, 80% of districts plan to have at least some live instruction, she says. 

“A huge blessing” 

Measuring the quality of instruction is another matter. Content varies widely from district to district and even school to school. Some districts, such as Lodi Unified, where the Okoreeh children are enrolled, took some of their curriculum and digitized it. “That is a huge blessing,” says Lori Celiz, who teaches third grader Emma Okoreeh at Ansel Adams Elementary in Stockton.

Many teachers, including Mrs. Celiz, spent their summer training for online teaching. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest school district, a third of the teachers completed an optional summer certification program for remote learning – this on top of required training in the spring and just before school started Aug. 18.

Social media is also buzzing with teachers sharing content ideas. “I’ve never seen teachers collaborate like we are collaborating right now,” says Mrs. Celiz. “If anything positive is coming out of this, that would be one thing.”

Last week, her class took a virtual field trip to the Statue of Liberty, then drew the statue as an art project – an idea she got from a teachers group on Facebook. “Students are learning they have to do school where they are,” she says. 

Some districts are turning to established online programs, such as Zearn Math, or contracting with large online education providers, such as K12 Inc. and Florida Virtual School. The Sunshine State requires all districts to have an online curriculum, partly because of hurricanes.

Still, many students would rather be in the classroom. “I don’t like online learning at all,” says Will Knight, an honor-roll junior in Durango, Colorado. He and most students at Durango High School have chosen to return to school Aug. 31. He is looking forward to seeing his friends and having greater access to teachers. 

Mrs. Celiz says her gut feeling is that remote learning is here to stay in some form – and that it will change the nature of K-12 education. Some kids do work better online, she says, and it can open new worlds to children.

It can also help save their current worlds. In California, where wildfires are raging, people are under widespread evacuation orders. When the town of Paradise burned in the 2018 Camp Fire, Mrs. Celiz’s school had to shut down due to poor air quality from drifting smoke. “Had we had a system in place, our kids would not have missed those instructional days.” 

More research needed 

Online learning at the K-12 level was not well studied before the pandemic, says Ms. Lake. She helped with a 2015 study of virtual charter schools that found students at these schools had “significantly weaker” academic performance than students in conventional schools. But these schools are alternatives for children who are struggling – a “completely different animal” from universal online education, she says. Other research supports the idea that online learning, when done right, can have benefits. 

One of Ms. Lake’s greatest concerns is the digital divide between students who have access to computers and can connect to the internet, and those who cannot. She is also concerned about students in special education, and students who are homeless or in foster care. In California, the most populous state in the nation, most students are beginning the school year online (with new exceptions for in-person learning for students who need specialized services). And yet 700,000 students don’t have access to a computer, and 300,000 don’t have internet access – despite considerable efforts by state and local officials.

“Districts are very cognizant of the fact that they have to be much better [at distance learning], because there’s already a substantial loss of learning, and that can’t continue,” says Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

According to a report by the Los Angeles Unified School District, 50,000 Black and Latino students in middle and high school did not regularly participate in online school in the spring, laying bare deep disparities. A spokesperson for LAUSD says in an emailed statement that the steps taken this school year include dividing the district “into 40 ‘communities of schools’ – clusters of elementary, middle and high schools that will partner with nonprofits and other local groups and will focus instruction and resources based on the unique needs of students.” The district will also provide one-on-one tutoring.

In Austin, Texas, where school will begin remotely Sept. 8, the Austin Independent School District is also trying to overcome that divide. It has “worked hard” to get Chromebooks to families that need computers, delivered Wi-Fi hot spots, and even sent specially equipped buses to various neighborhoods to act as Wi-Fi hubs, says Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, the teachers union. The school district plans to invite students who don’t have access to technology to attend school in person for remote learning on campus. At least 10 districts around the country are planning something similar, according to Ms. Lake.

On the menu: live instruction 

In the Northeast, the Center for Public Research and Leadership at Columbia Law School in New York studied distance-learning successes in Connecticut and has put together recommendations for public schools going virtual this fall. Structure, consistency, and live instruction in all core subjects are incredibly important, says Elizabeth Chu, executive director of the center. So is finding ways for children to socialize and enjoy each other at the start and end of the school day, as well as incorporating online teacher-family sessions each week. That should be doable given that the online school day is generally shorter than the in-class day, she says.

Even with all of her planning, the first day was rough in Mrs. Celiz’s class in Stockton. As she was teaching via Zoom, she got 64 messages from parents trying to troubleshoot problems. Some Chromebooks didn’t work properly. Some couldn’t connect.

“It’s a whole new world,” she says. “I’m not just teaching third graders; I’m teaching third graders plus their parents, because they are at home guiding their work.”

The second week went “much better.” Her students start the day at 8:30 doing independent work, and at 9:00 a.m. they are now on time for their first live session – math. As she learned last spring, the parents of some students work nontraditional hours, so she’s more flexible after lunch. If some of her students need to take a break till Mom or Dad get home, they can, as long as the next morning their work is turned in.

“They’re troopers,” she says glowingly of her students. The parents, too, “are working really hard at making this a success.” Mrs. Celiz maintains close contact with them through an app – Class Dojo – that also translates. Currently, she’s using Spanish and Vietnamese at a school where about 75% of the students get free or subsidized meals. 

She wishes she could be with them – helping them form letters correctly, seeing their work. ”I have a lot to learn,” she says, “but I’m so far from where I started in March.”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

“You must meet my 10-year-old son,” beams Pavitra, a subsistence farmer in Thottampatti, a village in Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state. “He’s as tall as I am.” 

She credits her son’s stature and her family’s good health to millets, which they eat daily. “We haven’t been to the hospital in a long time,” she says. 

Pavitra, who belongs to India’s marginalized Dalit community, became convinced of the high nutrition value of millets after attending several meetings of the Women’s Collective, a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 small farmers in the drought-prone state to promote food security using millets.

She began cultivating the grains in 2015 and now grows four kinds – finger, pearl, barnyard, and foxtail – on her 4.5-acre plot of dry land, along with corn, cotton, groundnut, as well as several vegetables and legumes. The food is more than enough to feed her extended family of seven year-round. 

Sheelu Francis, one of the founders of the Women’s Collective, notes millets’ resilience to drought and climate change. It is less sensitive than wheat, she says, to rising temperatures, and a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of millets requires just 250 liters (66 gallons) of water, compared to more than 10 times that for rice. The grains also have a shorter growth cycle than wheat or rice, and they can be stored for up to three decades. 

“We see millets as the answer to the looming food, water, and climate crisis,” says Ms. Francis.

Courtesy of Bettada Budadha Thota Natural Farm

A stalk of finger millet, known as ragi in several parts of India.

Seeds of change

Native to Africa and Asia, millets are members of the grass family, Poaceae, a sprawling taxon that includes staple crops like corn, wheat, rice, as well as bamboo, sugarcane, and Kentucky bluegrass. In the past, millets fed the masses of poor and disadvantaged people in India, particularly the Dalits, the lowest rung of the country’s caste system.  

That changed in the 1960s, when the so-called Green Revolution replaced traditional farming practices and indigenous seeds with pesticide-and-fertilizer-intensive agricultural techniques and hybrid wheat and rice seeds. But now, climate change is prompting experts and authorities to recognize the hardiness and resilience of this ancient grain. 

Cultivating millets has been transformational for the small, landless farmers of the Women’s Collective. In addition to achieving food security and financial independence, about a thousand female farmers have become landowners, and nearly 700 are now practicing collective farming on leased land, between six and 10 members per collective farm. Some 1,300 now have a credit card.

Ms. Francis says that women have taken over governance in at least 75 villages. “We are organizing ourselves, educating ourselves, and fighting for our rightful place in society,” she says.

Courtesy of Millets, Machines & Tools

A mobile millets grader, designed by Millets, Machines & Tools, is used in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

“A forgotten crop”

In 2013, millets were included in the National Food Security Act, alongside rice and wheat. The act aims to provide highly subsidized food grains to two-thirds of India’s households. Pan-India organizations like the Millet Network of India and the All India Millet Sisters, with grassroots representatives from 15 states, are working to have millets included in every public food program, particularly those for children.

In some Indian states, like the southwestern state of Karnataka and the eastern state of Odisha, the state government actively promotes the production and consumption of millets. In several other states, the revival of millets is led by grassroots organizations, like the Deccan Development Society in the south-central state of Telangana and North East Network in the hilly, northeastern state of Nagaland.

“Millets were a forgotten crop for a while,” says C. Shambu Prasad, professor of strategic management at the Institute of Rural Management Anand. “Hence, there’s a huge lag of public investment in developing the millets ecosystem, for example in processing technology.”

This lack of suitable processing machinery led Dinesh Kumar, one of the co-founders of earth360, a millets-based enterprise in the southern-central state of Andhra Pradesh, to focus on designing robust processing machines, alongside working with more than 3,000 farmers. Mr. Kumar helped set up Millet, Machines & Tools (MMT), a company that has developed several machines designed for community use, including a mobile millets grader to remove impurities, a huller, and a destoner. “We are focusing on the entire millets value chain – from farmers to processing technology to consumers – to ensure long-term sustainability,” he says.

Courtesy of earth360

A farmer stands in his field of pearl millet in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Building a market

Another challenge highlighted by Professor Prasad is creating the demand for millets, especially among urban consumers. “In larger Indian cities, quinoa sourced from overseas is sold as health food,” he says. “We need to get urban consumers to make the shift to millets.” 

This is where companies like Kaulige Foods come into the picture. Arun Kaulige, co-founder of Kaulige Foods and earth360, says that he has held more than 300 workshops in Bengaluru to familiarize city-dwellers with millets. His Facebook group, Cooking with Millets, is a platform for members to share their millet recipes and ask questions.

Millets, especially finger millets, have also been traditionally consumed in the state of Maharashtra in western India, where it is known as ragi. This inspired local artist-poet Anjali Purohit to write Ragi Ragini, a half novel, half cookbook about a sick girl, Ragini, who is nursed back to health with a diet rich in the grain by her maternal grandmother. 

“Traditional foods like millets have an ancient wisdom which we must preserve,” says Ms. Purohit.

As the coronavirus pandemic descended over Ghana earlier this year, the country’s strange new reality was anchored by frequent televised speeches from its president, Nana Akufo-Addo.

Wearing his trademark tiny round spectacles and speaking in a soothing, grandfatherly voice, he began each speech with the same words.

“Fellow Ghanaians ...”

So when a local fabric-maker decided to commemorate the pandemic with a series of new designs, it felt natural to begin with the president. Specifically, his glasses. The fabric-maker created a fabric featuring Mr. Akufo-Addo’s Harry Potter-esque specs floating against a swirling red, white, and green background.

Quarme Akoto/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A coronavirus-themed fabric by Ghana Textiles Printing commemorates Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo's glasses.

“We’re storytellers in the designs we create,” says the Rev. Stephen Kofi Badu, marketing director for Tex Styles Ghana Ltd., the parent company of Ghana Textiles Printing (GTP), which released its line of coronavirus-themed fabrics in mid-June. “So we set out to look for ways of telling the story of COVID-19 for generations to come in a positive light.”

In Ghana, indeed, fabric is often imbued with deep meaning. That tradition stretches back centuries, through the history of kente – a now world-famous geometric woven cloth whose patterns symbolize qualities like knowledge, service, and creativity. In Ghana today, the design on someone’s clothing might tell you his or her religion, preferred political party, or profession. For instance, when Mr. Akufo-Addo addressed the nation recently wearing a shirt patterned with ahwedepo, the buds on a stalk of sugar cane, many saw it as a symbol that the worst of the pandemic had passed, and life was beginning again.

In normal times in cities like Accra, the capital, sewing machines clatter day and night in the tiny roadside workshops of the country’s thousands of tailors. Customers bring hand-selected fabrics from local markets to be transformed into flowing tunics and boldly patterned skirts and dresses custom-made to their specifications.

Quarme Akoto/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

This Ghana Textiles Printing factory in the Tema heavy industrial area of Ghana is manufacturing COVID-19-themed textiles.

But in late March, two weeks after the first confirmed coronavirus case in Ghana, Mr. Akufo-Addo announced a two-week lockdown in Accra and Kumasi, the country’s two largest cities. Everyone would have to stay home. There would be no weddings or funerals, no parties or church services. Tailors couldn’t work. And their customers had nowhere to wear their designs anyway.

For GTP, like many companies, it was a moment of crisis. “We were really down,” Mr. Badu says. Sales dropped from pre-pandemic levels of about 1 million yards a month to less than 100,000, he says.

But for a company used to designing fabrics that told Ghana’s stories, it also felt like a profoundly important moment to remember. “We challenged our creative team to look out for the silver lining in this phenomenon,” Mr. Badu says, and to design fabrics that would draw beauty from this dark moment in the country’s history.  

Soon, GTP had come up with several pandemic-related designs. Besides the fabric featuring Mr. Akufo-Addo’s glasses, there were designs featuring padlocks to signify the lockdown and plane propellers to mark the closing of the country’s borders.

At Tema market, near Accra, Cecilia Koomson’s fabric-selling business had been dragging because of the coronavirus. Even after the country began to ease restrictions on movement and business in late April, people were broke. And there were few formal occasions to mark with new clothes. But when she began laying out the swatches of coronavirus fabric, she noticed a sudden change.

“Patronage has been wonderful. I’ve actually run out of stock and placed an order for new consignments,” she says from her wooden stall in the congested Tema General Market. “In the first week when it was unveiled, a lot of people came for them.”

Quarme Akoto/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A billboard in Accra, Ghana, shows Ghanaian actress Martha Ankomah, an ambassador for Ghana Textiles Printing. She is wearing a "Fellow Ghanaians" outfit – the fabric design being one of GTP's coronavirus-themed patterns.

For Wise Gbogho, a teacher who has been out of the classroom for five months and counting as a result of the pandemic, buying the COVID-19 fabric felt like a way to mark a difficult chapter in the history of his country – and the world.  

“I want something to keep and also wear to remember the unprecedented period we have gone through this year,” he says. “It has not been easy for the past months without a regular income. I live on past savings and my account is almost depleted, but there is hope. This ‘Fellow Ghanaians’ design means a lot to me,” he adds, referring to the fabric patterned with the president’s spectacles.

GTP originally planned to sell about 100,000 yards of the fabric, Mr. Badu says. But within two weeks, it had already sold out, and GTP had to begin a fresh order at its factory in Tema, near the capital.

In the meantime, the company is preparing for the release of a new design in the line in September. Mr. Badu says he can’t describe the exact pattern before it hits the market, but explains that it was designed to mark the gradual easing of restrictions and a return to a version of normal life. Although coronavirus cases are still rising in the country, the lockdown has been largely lifted, with only limited restrictions on large gatherings. Businesses have reopened, and Ghanaians are once again going to church and marking life milestones like weddings and funerals.

For Mr. Gbogho, wearing the COVID-19-themed fabric he purchased has been a way to express his hope for the country to emerge from the pandemic stronger. 

“Every Sunday, I’ll be going to church in garments made from these designs,” he says. “I plan to do so till the year ends, if God permits. I am quite optimistic a time will come when we’ll all look back and say, ‘We made it.’”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

Reuters

A pro-democracy protester wearing a mask that reads "Lese majeste" flashes a three-finger salute, a symbol of resistance, during an Aug. 3 protest in Bangkok, Thailand.

In recent weeks, Thailand has been rocked by the largest pro-democracy protests in years. Yet the size of the crowds is not really the news. Rather, it is a bold demand by many of the youthful demonstrators. They want to start a debate about the monarchy – a taboo topic in Thailand. 

Merely by speaking out about the king’s authority – and the military generals who currently rule in his name – the protesters have revealed how much the Southeast Asian nation now embraces civic values like free speech, equality, and self-governance. 

The Thai military, which took power in a 2014 coup, has arrested many of the protesters. It has also forced Facebook to restrict access to an anti-monarchy group called the Royalist Marketplace, which has over a million members. Facebook is suing the government while the academic who runs the site, Pavin Chachavalpongpun, plans to set up a new one. “Can you really block news and information in 2020?” he asks.

Young Thais see their on-again-off-again democracy being held back by a governing elite that enforces a reverence for the monarchy, or a belief that authority is derived from royal bloodlines. A lèse-majesté law imposes prison terms of up to 15 years for anyone who insults the monarchy, which is now headed by King Maha Vajiralongkorn. He ascended the throne in 2016 and, unlike his long-ruling father, has reigned with an aloof style. 

In a country where many in authority still claim power by pedigree or ancestral traits, the idea of universal rights and liberties has taken a long time to spread. Yet as protesters have made clear, the best democracy elevates the worthiest individuals to rule, regardless of genetic lineage or belief in due inheritance. 

“Power is never a good, unless he be good that has it,” said Alfred the Great, a pre-modern English king whose words are as modern as can be. The demands in Thailand for mutual respect and open-mindedness are the kind that have felled kings for centuries. Fewer Thais now see bloodlines as destiny. And more want a democratic society in which each individual can rise by their unique talents and their inherent ability to flourish.