29 stories of teachers, bus drivers and others who went above and beyond
Educators and staff in the K-12 school system attend to children well beyond the bell, forming a safety net that's both critical and fragile. When COVID-19 closed schools in 2020, time-tested systems fell apart. But educators swung into action, modeling resourcefulness and resilience for their students. In April, when we put out a call for educators and other school employees whose work made students' pandemic learning experience better, we were optimistic that the chaotic academic year would be the last of its kind. But now, before some schools have even started, the coming year is in flux. This salute to educators starts with an essay by Dr. Jill Biden, a teacher for more than 30 years. Then we tell 29 stories of people who went to extraordinary lengths to keep students from falling through the cracks. —Andrea Delbanco, editor-in-chief, TIME for Kids
Ife Damon, Multisubject teacher | Staten Island, N.Y.
Ife Damon wanted her high school students to become change agents—especially in a year when the world grappled with a pandemic, health disparities, police violence and systemic racism. So she adapted her lessons to meet the moment.
Last school year, Damon taught ninth- and 10th-grade English at Curtis High School, which serves mostly Black and Latino students within a predominantly white borough of New York City. She instructed her students to make pandemic time capsules that focused not only on COVID-19 but also on the Black Lives Matter movement. Students interviewed a relative or community member about their perspective on the pandemic and created videos about their experience as teens during the past year.
During a lesson on dystopias, Damon, 44, asked students to write about injustices that bother them in the U.S. today. And she expanded a lesson on persuasive writing by asking them to send their essays to people in power. Some petitioned for more sports teams at their school; others called for justice for Breonna Taylor or advocated for LGBTQ rights, while sharing their own experiences with discrimination.
"As a Black woman in America, growing up in American education, these issues weren't addressed in school," says Damon, but she believes that such conversations are necessary for the world to change and that they must start with young people. "I wanted them to feel empowered and know that they can make change now." —Katie Reilly
Melito Ramirez, Intervention specialist | Walla Walla, Wash.
Melito Ramirez still remembers the high school English teacher who showed up at his house and helped him go back to school after he'd dropped out to work and support his family. More than 40 years later, Ramirez found himself in that teacher's shoes, going house to house to find students who had stopped attending class during the pandemic.
Many had taken full-time jobs to help their families, so Ramirez, who was an intervention specialist at Walla Walla High School until June, worked with parents and teachers to create flexible schedules to help them complete schoolwork amid other responsibilities.
"Their grades just plummeted because they're tired, they're working, they're dealing with other stuff," says Ramirez, who also delivered food and connected families with resources to help pay bills.
"My job is not to say, 'You need to get to school. You need to get out there or you're gonna wind up going to court,'" says Ramirez, 60, who is now the transportation supervisor for College Place, Wash., schools. "My job is to knock on the door and say, 'Are you O.K.? Do you need something? What can we do to help?'" —K.R.
Bridget Weiss, Superintendent | Juneau, Alaska
Compared with other parts of Alaska, Juneau may not be that remote. Still, there are no roads in or out of the city. Food and other supplies have to be barged or flown in, so advance planning is critical. That's something that Bridget Weiss, superintendent of the Juneau school district, is particularly good at. But the COVID-19 pandemic forced her into uncharted territory.
In February 2020, Weiss began working with colleagues to prepare as she followed reports of a spreading virus. In March, a day before the U.S. declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19, Weiss learned that a child in her district had symptoms of the disease. Administrators worked late into the night to prepare a full shutdown and cleaning of the student's school. "That was our first like, 'Oh, now what do we do?' There were no protocols in place," says Weiss, 58. "We had no guidance yet. We didn't even know as a country what symptoms we were really looking for yet."
Weiss persuaded the Juneau city government to let the district close all schools for a few days so administrators could devise a long-term remote-­teaching plan in case of future shutdowns. The Juneau school district quickly trained teachers to lead virtual classes, provided Chromebooks to its 4,600 students and ensured they had Internet access.
For those living in areas without Internet service, the district set up wi-fi hotspots in churches and other community centers. Weiss also coordinated with the district's busing company to use its vehicles for daily food deliveries to students—this way, bus drivers could stay employed.
The school district wasn't just a vital resource for its students. Its nurses and health assistants ran a COVID-19 hotline. When vaccines became available for minors, the district had already laid the groundwork to vaccinate them quickly. It inoculated more than 600 students within two days once the age was dropped to 12.
Weiss says partnership was crucial to getting the city and its schools through that first pandemic school year. "I think as a school district in isolation, we wouldn't have been able to accomplish the same," she says. "Nor could the city have [succeeded] without our help."
But someone had to build and nurture that partnership, and that person was Weiss, says Christopher Cairns, a systems technician at the school district. "The community's health outcomes are as good as they are because of us," Cairns wrote, when he suggested Weiss for inclusion in this issue of TIME. "Though we all shined brightly during this last year, [Weiss] was the one directing the spotlight. —Jasmine Aguilera.
Deana Dueño, Librarian | Reston, Va.
Deana Dueño's elementary-school library speaks to her passion for books. Posters with slogans emphasizing the benefits of reading decorate the walls: "Books bring me joy" and "Keep calm and read on." Shelves of picture books and chapter books cater to young readers.
But during the pandemic, Dueño's biggest challenge became getting books into the hands of children who couldn't come into the cheerful Terraset Elementary School library anymore. So she started delivering books to them, loading up her car and visiting as many as 50 houses every Monday with a curated stack of books for each student. "It just sort of snowballed, but in a good way," Dueño says.
Kids would come running when she knocked at their door. Parents would send photos of their child reading at home. When she popped into virtual classes, she was inundated with requests: "Ms. Dueño, could you please email my parents? I really want books delivered." "Can you make sure I get this book on the next delivery?"
As her district reopened, Dueño, 50, welcomed students back to school this fall, some setting foot in the library for the very first time. —K.R.
Henry Darby, Principal | North Charleston, S.C.
Henry Darby didn't sleep much during the last school year. For months, he finished his full-time job as a high school principal in North Charleston, S.C., worked overnight stocking shelves at Walmart, and then went right back to North Charleston High School to oversee another day of pandemic learning.
Darby didn't need the extra money for himself. He donated earnings from his second job—which he'd taken as he saw the financial hardship arising from COVID-19—back to his school community, helping students and their families buy groceries, make mortgage payments and cover funeral costs. His school has a high poverty rate, and before taking the Walmart job, Darby had begun dipping into his personal emergency savings to help families in need.
"I just couldn't tell parents and students no, particularly when I knew that they were in need," says Darby, 66. "So the logical next thing for me to do was to get another job."
From August 2020 until April 2021, Darby worked at Walmart three days a week, from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., then punched out and arrived at school by 7:45 a.m. "I basically slept on the weekends," says Darby, who is also a member of the Charleston County Council.
His work earned him the Order of the Palmetto, the state's highest civilian honor, from Gov. Henry McMaster, who called Darby "a remarkable man."
He only quit Walmart in April when his surgeon told him, ahead of a neck surgery, that he could no longer stock shelves.
"People helped me as a young child when I needed them the most," says Darby, whose father, mother and grandmother all died before he turned 18. "And people really looked out to help me." As more than 600 students at his school dealt with illness, unemployment and grief, Darby has continued to look out for them. —K.R.
Mark Estrada, Superintendent | Lockhart, Texas
When schools shut their doors in March 2020, leaving students with no option but remote learning, about 40% of families in the Lockhart independent school district lacked home Internet access. Many lived in dead zones in their rural area. "Even if their families could afford it, it doesn't exist. If you give them a hotspot, they're just paperweights out there," says Mark Estrada, the district's superintendent.
The district worked with Particle Communications, a Texas-based Internet provider, and spent about $650,000 to build five wireless Internet towers in the district, most of which was later reimbursed by federal CARES Act funding. That enabled 1,600 students to get online at home, including some who used hotspots.
"I knew we were doing the right thing by making this investment, because so many kids are able to be at home and get the Internet that they need without having to work so hard to try to find somewhere to get connected," says Estrada, 39. "When I got to the district 10 years ago, we didn't even have wi-fi in the building, so we've gone from not having wi-fi in our school classrooms to having it in our living rooms across the community." —K.R.
Jennifer DiVasto, Orchestra director | Doylestown, Pa.
An orchestra relies on community. So how the heck could it be taught remotely? That was the question that Jennifer DiVasto, the orchestra director of Central Bucks High School East, asked herself at the start of the 2020–2021 school year as the pandemic moved classes online.
First, DiVasto asked all 80 orchestra students, ages 15 to 18, to rehearse with their cameras on so she could correct their posture, and to send her recordings of themselves playing. She could feel them getting discouraged as they listened to their mistakes over and over again, but DiVasto, 38, was determined to give the kids a sense of success. So she asked a student who loved filmmaking if he could help her make a music video in lieu of the orchestra's usual fall concert. He agreed, and used a drone to film students, socially distanced, on the school football field playing their instruments. DiVasto mixed the prerecorded audio.
The result was a hit with the students, who did additional videos for their holiday and springtime concerts. "I've been teaching for 16 years. And this is by far the hardest year of teaching," says DiVasto, who has since transferred to a different school. "It was all about celebrating the successes we did have, because that's what keeps you pushing through … and the kids are what bring the joy. That's why we got into this in the first place." —Madeleine Carlisle