OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Local organizations have come together to encourage the community to do what is necessary to help children who are struggling with a return to the classrooms.
Do Right, Right Now is an online initiative targeted at COVID-19 and the most recent one is an effort to help minority students.
As students have returned to the classroom, educators are seeing the struggles they're facing due to the pandemic.
"We've seen a lag in some of our test scores and a lag in some of our achievement. We've got plans in place over the next couple of years to try and bridge that gap," said Jason Buckingham, assistant superintendent for Ralston Public Schools.
The biggest gap?
Minority students falling even further behind.
Educators said that access to resources and technology play a part in that.
“It was so hard for me to stay focused, I kept getting distracted by my game, my telephone. On top of that, I felt like the teacher wasn't explaining the work to us and breaking it down for us at home so it was like 10 times harder for me to figure it out by myself,” said Sydney Flight, 11th-grade student.
The Do Right, Right Now website offers a tool kit. Any organization or person can download the kit.
You can print out posters, flyers and even communicate via social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.
The campaign's main concern right now is making sure people get vaccinated. That will slow the spread and help keep kids safe, so they can concentrate and make up for any learning deficits.
“I think we need to reinvent and reimagine what education looks like right now and one starts with a shift in attitudes and we have heard a lot about learning loss and what we would like to say is that there is unfinished learning that has happened over the course of the last year and so we are going to ask schools to look at the whole child approach,” said Ebony McKiver, social studies education specialist with the Nebraska Department of Education.
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