Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 18

18 September/October 2020

hundreds of students," she said. "We
never know who is exposed to whom."
If the school brings back all its kids,
Sha told me she will refuse to teach inperson classes, despite her advancement and new credential. "I will not
go," she said. -NG

JAYASHREE SHA
AGE: 47
SCHOOL: Broward Virtual University
(Florida)
PROGRAM: Postgraduate certificate,
gifted education endorsement
STATUS: Recent graduate

OVID-19 gave Jayashree Sha an
opportunity. A math teacher in
Pembroke Pines, Florida, Sha was in the
middle of studying for a certification to
instruct gifted students when the virus
hit. Normally, she would have taken
time off from the certificate program
for her annual summer visit to India,
where she grew up. But the pandemic made that impossible, allowing her
to spend June and July finishing her
courses online. "I can't go anywhere,"
Sha told me. "I thought this would be a
perfect time to take the classes."
She did, receiving her certificate on
August 2. It should have been a moment
of triumph. Sha, after all, has long
wanted to work with higher-performing kids. "I love the curiosity," she said
of such students. "You ask a question,
and so many people have answers."
But instead, the excitement has been
overshadowed by profound anxiety. Despite being one of the global hotspots
for COVID-19, Florida is pushing its
schools to open for in-person instruction this fall. As of this writing, Somerset Academy, where Sha teaches, is
planning to offer a hybrid model of
in-class and online instruction. This
means she might have to risk her life in
order to work.
Sha finds that untenable. "We see

SYDNEY MCKINSTRY
AGE: 21
SCHOOL: University of Michigan
(Ann Arbor, MI)
PROGRAM: Bachelor's,
history and psychology
YEAR: Recent graduate

s a resident adviser in a dorm, Sydney McKinstry got an inside view
of the chaotic process of shutting down
a large school. For her junior and senior
years at the University of Michigan,
she had been employed by the school to
supervise dormitories and apartment
complexes on campus. After the school
announced that in-person classes were
ending, it also encouraged all students
who could leave to do so.
McKinstry was worried that if all
the students left, the school would decide they didn't need RAs anymore and
would stop paying them. In that case,
she'd need to find another part-time
job, just as she was trying to finish requirements for her two majors (history and psychology) and write an honors thesis. Or perhaps, she worried,
they'd require the RAs to clear out, and
then she'd have to move back in with
her parents, which she didn't want to
do. "I lost three weeks of productivity

Courtesy of the students

or Selvin Marquina, the COVID-19
pandemic began like it did for many
college students: He struggled to make
the transition from in-person to online
learning. Now a second-year student at
Montgomery College, a community college in Maryland, Marquina has already
experienced more than his share of trauma. He grew up in El Salvador, where he
was targeted for kidnapping at age 12.
After that, his family sent him to the
United States and he bounced around the
foster care system before being adopted
and granted legal immigrant status. He
is now working on a double major in computer gaming and simulation, and digital animation. After his school shifted
to remote classes in March, he found his
computer programming classes unmanageable without one-on-one interactions
with a teacher. It was his first exposure
to programming languages, and, he said,
"I did not know what I was doing." So he
dropped two courses, both of which are
required for his major.
At first, the social-distancing measures didn't feel too bad. "I'm more of a
homebody," he said, plus he wanted to
follow the guidelines from public health
officials. "I would do what they say-
stay home, don't go out," he said, and
when he needed to get outside, he'd take
his dog for a walk. He discovered other
outlets, too: calling up childhood friends
he'd lost touch with, and working on his
drawing skills.
This summer, he started designing
stickers, posters, and bookmarks; most
are pastel-colored illustrations of popular video game characters. "When I have
enough designs I'll open an Etsy shop,"
he says, referring to a popular online
marketplace. Eventually, he wants to be
a film and game designer.
Looking ahead, Marquina is apprehensive about the fall. His school is planning on remote learning once again, and
he's not sure whether he will have success retaking coding classes online. "I'm
the type of person who learns better in a
classroom," he told me. "It becomes really hard to learn from home." He's feeling
much more confident, though, about the
advanced design course he's also signed
up for. -EV

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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