A Tale of Two Pandemics: Examining Black Family Engagement at the Intersection of Distance Learning and Black Lives Matter

Abstract

The recent global pandemic triggered by the spread of COVID-19 left the majority of school systems across the United States moving quickly toward remote learning and hybrid models of education. As school buildings closed many K-12 school systems adopted a form of whole-school distance learning, leaving students to learn from home and families to support these swift changes. Black students and their families concurrently navigated the country’s “racial reckoning” due to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black men and women at the hands of the police.

A qualitative study was guided by three goals: (1) to understand how Black students and their families experienced distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) to examine how schools attempted to engage with Black students and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic, if at all; and (3) to build on the scant literature on the experiences of Black families during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of distance learning. Nine focus groups were conducted with 10 students and 20 parents that explored Black middle and high school students and their families’ distance learning experiences. The data led to several notable findings. Black students and their families navigated a host of technological, social-emotional, mental health, and academic challenges in the move to implement remote learning. Parents’ roles shifted dramatically to support this new normal.

The content of this chapter was extracted verbatim from the author’s abridged 2022 doctorate of education dissertation, University of California, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/52q2r65v.