CMS families, teachers manage 1st week of virtual school. One mom’s rule: No pajamas.

On a first day of school like no other, teachers, parents and students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools still sought to create some sense of normalcy as remote learning kicked off the year. Across the county, students overcame the usual first day shyness, teachers celebrated the wins of the day and commiserated over technical hurdles, and parents and the community did their best to keep the day on track.

The CMS board voted to reopen under full remote learning, and it has established a medical advisory board to come up with metrics on when kids might return to school. For now, Zoom log-ons and virtual classrooms will replace the traditional school day.

“We hope this is the first of several first days of school this year, our next one being when we bring students back to some of our campuses,” Superintendent Earnest Winston said Monday.

The Observer followed parents, students, educators and community organizers as they navigated the first of those first days. Here’s a look at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on day one.

‘I love what I do’

For Danielle Belton, an elementary school principal and veteran CMS educator, flexibility is the word that defines this year, her seventh at Paw Creek Elementary School and her 17th in CMS.

Early Monday morning, Carolina Panthers backpacks lined the main hallway, organized by grade level and stuffed with workbooks, notebooks and school supplies. The first-grade bundles had a special extra, a bright neon supply basket that the teachers purchased so their students could organize a workspace in their homes.

The school day starts at 8:30, but Belton knows not all of her kids can log on that exact minute every day. Her teachers will record their lessons and make them available to rewatch in the evenings or another more convenient time. While some children are at home, others will be at the YMCA, day care centers or other childcare arrangements that might make it harder to follow an exact schedule.

“We know that families are all different,” she said. “We’re working to meet parents where they are.”

In Paw Creek’s classrooms, teachers opened the year much like any other, despite the physical absence of students in their desks. They set the usual ground rules, asked students to discuss the importance of friendship and respect in the classroom, and played get-to-know-you games.

Teonna Prioleau reminded her fifth-graders that as the oldest in the school, it was time for them to be leaders. The students, though muted, cheered when Belton popped into the video frame to say hello, asking them what extracurriculars they wanted to see.

Downstairs, Donna Golden led her fifth-graders through a virtual show-and-tell exercise. She gave them one minute to bring back three items that were meaningful to them to share with the class, starting a timer and reminding the kids to be careful as they ran around.

Though her kids were all on the screen of her laptop, faces smiled back at her from the desks spaced out for social distancing once the district decides it’s safe to bring students back to some form of in-person learning. Golden had drawn a cartoon student for each seat, inspired by the way some sports leagues have filled the stands without fans.

“I even named them,” Golden said with a laugh. “I figured if it’s good enough for baseball, it’s good enough for me.”

Whatever this year throws at Paw Creek and her staff, Belton said she’s confident they will be ready to handle it. She said the school and the district had designed robust systems to address issues as they occur, whether that’s technology glitches or getting students the extra help they need.

When asked if she was excited for this school year, Belton laughed warmly. She said that each year brought its challenges, but that every year she looked forward to helping her students grow.

“I love what I do,” she said. “I know my staff is resilient, my (students’) parents are wonderful. We’re, more than anything, committed to doing whatever it takes to meet kids where they are and to support their families.”

A learning curve

A chorus of voices echoes from computer speakers in a sun-filled room at Grier Heights Community Center.

Twenty-two students, ranging from elementary to high school age, attend virtual calls with their new teachers on laptops and phones. Only a few wear headphones.

Parents who don’t have internet access or the capacity to keep their child at home during the school day sent their students to the community center, where Tijua Robinson, the center’s executive director, simultaneously acts as a principal, teacher, counselor and IT specialist. “Ms. T” can be heard coming out of a student’s mouth every few minutes.

All of the students at the center are Black, something that’s not lost on Robinson.

“People of color have always been dealt with in a disproportionate way. So with the virus striking, this is just another lens that has been exposed,” she said. “Accessing the internet is a major need, and it’s unfortunate, but the reality is that communities of color are going to be impacted by this.”

About half of Grier Heights residents don’t have internet access, making learning at home impossible during the pandemic.

Most of the kids at the community center will continue coming until students return to school buildings, Robinson said. But families who can keep their kids at home, those at the community center face greater risk of exposure as they gather next to their peers.

Though all students had a mask, by the end of the day, several masks found their way to the floor. And the students who did wear them sometimes had the coverings on incorrectly, pulled down past their noses.

Some students said that being in a classroom-adjacent setting helped them focus on Monday. Emilio Brown, a senior at Myers Park High School, said being around other students doing work encouraged him to stay engaged.

“It’s definitely different, but I enjoyed it,” he said. “I feel like everybody learns differently. For me, I can adjust to learning like this.”

Despite frustration stemming from technical difficulties in the morning, tension had eased by the afternoon and students hosted a dance battle on the steps of the community center right before lunch, Robinson laughing alongside them.

“Honestly, I’m still wrapping my brain around what this is going to be like because this is just the first week,” Robinson said. “This school year is definitely to be a learning curve for a lot of things.”

Big wins, big hurdles

Sierra Wiley had everything planned. It took just minutes for it all to go awry.

When the day started at 9 a.m., 12 of her 22 fourth-graders at First Ward Creative Arts Academy had logged on, a number that felt like a success given the unfamiliar setting. Five minutes later, the messages from parents started to pour in.

One student couldn’t find the Zoom code. Another had a Chromebook that couldn’t type capital letters, even though the password required it. And more than a handful simply couldn’t log on, as an outage on a technology platform used by many students in the state prevented thousands of North Carolina teachers and students from starting the year.

“The worst thing that could have happened, happened,” Wiley said, as much of what she needed to access for teaching that day was temporarily inaccessible.

Despite the rocky start, Wiley said she felt like she had a good number of wins by the end of the day. She had seen 21 of her 22 students online in her Zoom classroom that day. For the one student she couldn’t reach directly, she said, she was still able to talk to his mom.

She finally connected with a family she’d been trying to reach, but neither of the parents spoke English. Using the Talking Points app, a messaging platform that let Wiley text in English while the parents received the messages in their native Arabic, and vice versa, she was able to get her student on FaceTime and show him how to get on Canvas.

“It wasn’t perfect,” she said. “It wasn’t all happening at the planned times, but I got them all.”

Over the summer, Wiley built a virtual classroom on Canvas, complete with a Bitmoji of herself teaching at the board. Pictures of bookshelves and computer screens are actually links that take students to their Zoom classroom, their daily schedule, and new rooms organized by subjects.

Wiley said she wanted to replicate her physical classroom as much as possible, and that she was worried about her young students being able to navigate the Canvas folders properly. Clicking on a cubby labeled “Math” takes students to a new corner of her online classroom, where a fraction tool set on the shelf is actually a link to a virtual version of the real life object.

Her students loved it, and she said she was excited to see them engage and grow out of their initial shyness after the first 10 minutes. Unlike in the spring, when she had already formed a connection with her students, this year’s kids are brand new to her and each other.

“We’re starting from scratch,” she said. “I’m trying to get to know my students’ learning styles through a screen. ... But I’m excited for the challenge. I’ve grown so much as a teacher between March and now. ... I’m excited for all of the growth that’s going to happen, because that growth always doubles down to the kids.”

‘Just a weird feeling’

Heather Moss was getting ready to go on her morning walk when her phone started dinging.

“Morning. Anyone else not able to get on?” said a text from a Myers Park parent group chat at 7:51 a.m.

Soon, more dings indicated that many students were not able to log on to the district’s learning system, including Moss’s daughter and son, kicking off several hours of technical difficulties on the first day of school.

Marc, her 15-year-old son, joined his first class’ video conference on his phone instead, and he spent much of the morning troubleshooting problems with his school-issued Chromebook while trying to pay attention to his classes. Despite having internet access at his house and several computers, Marc continued to struggle with accessing the school’s learning system.

A couple of rooms down, his sister Madison was on the phone with a friend who was having similar problems. The two finally managed to log in after missing the first 10 minutes of the video call, but Madison said she was fielding questions from her brother all day about the system.

“It went pretty badly, considering the hub of everything was down,” Marc said. “Someone texted me to tell me it wasn’t working before I even tried to access it.”

Once Madison managed to log on, she said the rest of her day went smoothly.

“It’s hard to say because it was the first day and we didn’t do any actual learning, but I had no trouble engaging,” she said. “Hopefully this year will go better than the end of last year.”

Moss said she expected some technical problems during the first few days. She said she’s more concerned about students’ long-term learning.

“I’m worried that as a whole, education is going to suffer,” she said.

And though it felt more like a school day than in the spring, the siblings agreed that it still didn’t feel like the first day of school, despite their diverging experiences.

The night before, Moss said, the family marked the last day of summer with a Dairy Queen trip after dinner. But the next morning was like any other day.

“It was just a weird feeling,” she said. “And we’re all in the same boat.”

Exhausted but relieved

Six-year-old Teddy Hudson started first grade at Greenway Park Elementary School with a little emotional support just off-screen. His mother, Leslie, said he asked her to sit next to him while he logged on to his Zoom classroom. Every now and then, he’d reach for her hand, a periodic interruption to her day as she juggled working from home with keeping him on task.

While the students were muted and learning how the classroom technology worked, Teddy let out a loud exclamation that he was bored. But once the lesson started, Hudson said, he got over his shyness and jumped into engaging with the class, which moved through math lessons, games of Simon Says, arts electives and exercise breaks together.

“I think he would have been like that in the classroom too,” she said. “He takes a minute to warm up. But when they did the closing circle about how they felt during class, he said, ‘My feelings didn’t change, I was happy, then I was happy.’”

Hudson and her husband are alternating days at home with Teddy, and she said she felt privileged to be able to work from home during the remote learning period. Getting through the first day, despite the technical bumps that kept them from accessing the asynchronous learning material, felt like a relief, she said.

She said that compared to the sudden transition last year, Monday felt much more like a structured school day. Teddy was able to see his friends during an elective block focused on the arts, where the drama teacher led them through a lesson.

“I actually think this will be OK,” she said. “I think as the days wear on, we’ll either get into a really good groove or it’s all going to implode in a week. But overall, I feel good about it.”

A casual first day

Nine-year-old Jordyn Chisolm’s favorite outfit right now is a jumpsuit covered in florals, and she’s frequently found wearing some shade of neon.

For her first day of 4th grade on Monday, her mother’s only rule was no pajamas. But Jordyn decided on gray sweatpants instead.

“Today’s not my first day of school,” she explained to her surprised mother, Jennifer, before turning back to the laptop.

Chisolm tried to mimic a school day as much as possible for Jordyn and 7-year-old Jillian. Alarms sounded at 7 a.m. and after the girls got dressed, they had breakfast together about 30 minutes before their first Zoom call. In between classes, they had lunch, and Jennifer had the girls read in the afternoon.

But despite Chisolm’s attempts at making Monday feel like a school day, her daughters weren’t fooled.

“I thought it was pretty insightful,” she said. “In Jordyn’s mind, she’s not starting her first day of school until she’s face to face.”

Chisolm said even though technical issues threw a wrench into an already-stressful Monday morning, she’s trying to allow the district some grace.

“Some of these things are unavoidable,” she said. “The day was on par with my expectations, which weren’t too high. I knew there were going to be hiccups.”

Chisolm’s reluctant to say whether she thinks remote learning is going well and said it’s too early to tell, but she’s hopeful about the upcoming year.

“We’re able to make it work in our home because my husband and I are able to work from home,” she said. “What makes me most concerned is there’s going to be a huge potential academic gap across the board in the county. So I can’t say if it was a good or bad decision, because I firmly believe that depends on each family.”

In the meantime, a jumpsuit embroidered with golden tigers hiding behind jungle leaves and bright blooms hangs next to the desk where Jordyn does her school work, waiting to be worn on her actual first day of school.