The Importance of Literacy and Mathematics

Ms. Smith taught 3rd grade during the 2019–20 academic year at a medium-sized, suburban elementary school in Illinois. Although COVID was spreading across the US, Ms. Smith decided not to address the topic in her classroom for fear of upsetting her students. In her words:

Third graders are only eight or nine years old and a little bit unsure about what exactly [COVID] is. We didn’t want to raise the anxiety with the students, and I felt that that was more of the parent’s job to kind of say what’s going on.

Eventually, Ms. Smith’s school building closed due to COVID and her instruction moved online. As her school scrambled to put an instructional plan in place for the remainder of the year, literacy and mathematics took precedence over other subjects. As a result, there were no additional opportunities to address science topics, including COVID, with her students. As Ms. Smith explained:

So when we went totally virtual, the focus at that point was making sure that the students are getting the reading, writing, and math. I think that’s another reason where we weren’t really focusing on COVID. Unfortunately, the science and social studies . . . got pushed off to the side as far as what we would teach virtually.