Myriah Day spent much of the last school year like every other teacher in the Portland area: interacting with her students exclusively through a screen.
And, as most families and educators have said, it wasn’t easy.
It was difficult to engage with students who didn’t turn on their camera or participate in classroom chats. The reasons varied from pupil to pupil.
“They weren’t able to be as engaged as they wanted to be,” Day, a chemistry teacher at Roosevelt High, said. “Maybe they had to work. Maybe they had to watch a younger sibling.”
When the school year ended, some students still needed a bit of extra attention. So, for two weeks before Portland Public Schools’ summer programs went into session, Day mounted a push for those students to complete whatever schoolwork stood between them and either summer courses or a 10-week break.
It’s not unusual for Portland schools to bring students in to finish the odd assignment or two. But this year Day saw more students come back for such catch-up and for much longer.
Districts across the metro area face similar needs to help high school students get back on track as educators tie the loose ends left from a year of unpredictable circumstances wrought by the pandemic and look toward getting students into classrooms for five full days every week come fall.
First, they need to get through the next three months.
The Oregonian/OregonLive surveyed the eight largest Portland-area districts on their summer offerings, many of which will be funded through more than $300 million in state and federal grants.
While programming for students as young as kindergartners and as old as eighth graders focuses primarily on reintroducing children to social environments with some academic components, districts are putting the brunt of their high school efforts into making sure kids are on track to graduate.
Portland Public Schools typically offers a summer scholars program at Benson High for students in such scenarios. This year, the sheer scale of students’ need to make up unfinished credits required the district to offer those opportunities at all nine of its high schools.
About 6,800 students across the K-12 grade spectrum are expected to enroll for summer, spokesperson Karen Werstein said. That’s more than in any other district in the metro area, but others are similarly seeing a high need for summer programming, The Oregonian/OregonLive found.
In Hillsboro, officials estimate between 1,500 to 2,000 students will participate. More than 1,200 alone will enroll in the district’s bilingual offerings.
Tigard-Tualatin officials say they’ll serve about 2,000 students, half of them at the high-school level.
In addition to summer classes for students who need to make up credits, some districts are offering college and career readiness courses and even jobs.
Wendy Smith, a physician hospitalist at Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center, spent the last couple of weeks seeking out summer programs for her sons, a rising sophomore and senior at Lincoln High.
The boys did well, academically, over the school year. But Smith said they needed structured variety in their routines — the sophomore, in particular, became irritable as distance learning dragged on.
Roosevelt High chemistry teacher Myriah Day spent the last two weeks leading the school's credit completion program, helping students cross the 2020-21 finish line as they look toward summer and fall.Photo by Eder Campuzano/Staff
That’s why the family immediately signed up for hybrid learning in April and why Smith wanted to enroll the boys in some kind of summer program.
“I wanted to get them off the computer and outside as much as possible,” she said.
Her rising senior found a job as a part-time nanny and will take part in the Bodecker Foundation’s creative workshop later this month. The sophomore is taking a cooking course through the district and signed up for a camp run by the Boy Scouts.
“What I’ve seen from my high school kids, in terms of this missing interaction, has been tough,” Smith said. “Any opportunity to get these kids with their peers, interacting, has been imperative.”
In addition to academic and elective courses, districts are also dedicating some resources to introducing incoming freshmen to high school and making sure sophomores who spent little if any time on campus get acclimated as well.
“The goal is to reengage our learners and provide meaningful experiences to reconnect them to school and to their academic content,” Beaverton district spokesperson Shellie Bailey-Shah said.
In order to get students in the door for summer offerings, districts had to first identify why their pupils couldn’t engage in the first place.
Some had issues securing a reliable internet connection. Others worked new jobs to contribute to the family finances. Day, the Roosevelt High chemistry teacher, said the school’s credit completion programs focused on removing those barriers.
Day isn’t teaching during the summer. Instead, she’s using the time to embark on some professional development to address lingering trauma from the last year and to “fill my cup so that I’m ready for the fall.”
But Day has consulted her colleagues who plan on teaching during the summer months. She bristles at the term “credit recovery.”
“What are they recovering, exactly?” Day said. “Sometimes you just need a little bit more time to get on track because of the circumstances.”
She led outreach efforts for both Roosevelt’s end-of-year credit completion courses and for the summer classes. Day and her colleagues, who included teachers and school counselors, didn’t cast a wide net.
Instead, they picked up the phone and knocked on doors. They checked in with students who either hadn’t logged into class for long stretches or who they could tell struggled even when they did.
Day and other Roosevelt educators asked families what they thought their teens needed to make it across the finish line. That personal touch was a thorough line in the outreach efforts of every district The Oregonian/OregonLive surveyed.
“We would not have been able to set up the credit completion program the way we did if the whole community wasn’t on board,” Day said.
--Eder Campuzano | 503-221-4344 | @edercampuzano | Eder on Facebook
Eder is The Oregonian’s education reporter. Do you have a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email ecampuzano@oregonian.com.
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