Beyhan Farhadi, a post-doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Education at 91亚色, discusses the relationship between educational policy, online learning, and equity during COVID-19. Farhadi says 鈥渢he push for online learning is going to result in a lack of access to in-person programming.鈥�

"Let's begin with the fact that online聽learning was perhaps most taken advantage of by聽people who could take their kids聽elsewhere,聽maybe to聽the cottage,聽and set them up on the Wi-Fi and they聽could learn and all of that is wonderful, but we聽know that聽isn't most people in this province," says Farhadi,聽"The push for more and more online聽education will mean that for most families聽in Ontario,聽it's going to result in a lack of access to聽in-person programming and shortcuts to public聽education."

"With an opt-out option,聽you can only opt-out if you've聽got聽an option to learn in person," continues Farhadi, "But even if you opt-out, you risk losing the funding.聽I think this is one instance where聽what聽we're hearing doesn't really match what reality is."

Listen to the full podcast .

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Masks, social distancing and increased ventilation are all necessary pandemic measures in classrooms, but they can make for a difficult listening and hearing environment for students and teachers. While this is true for students with hearing loss, the capacity for COVID-19 measures to affect all students鈥� ability to hear clearly should also be considered.

Before COVID-19, classrooms already represented less-than-optimal-acoustic environments. It鈥檚 also true that young children, children who are learning a new language, children with language difficulties and children with recurrent ear infections have particular difficulty understanding speech in noisy situations.

The Elementary Teachers鈥� Federation of Ontario recognizes classroom noise as a barrier to teaching and learning. Read news coverage based on evidence, not alarm. COVID-19 measures potentially degrade the listening situation further because of masks, which remove visual cues for speech-reading and muffle the speaker鈥檚 voice, social distancing, plexiglass barriers or ventilation systems, which can add significant noise into the room.

Read the full article written by Associate Professor Pam Millett on .

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The Feed is 91亚色 Region鈥檚 only radio news magazine show with the stories, issues and events from across the region. They take you behind the scenes with in-depth news coverage as well as conversations with newsmakers, special guests and local personalities.

This week, Tina Cortese is joined with Dr. Sarah Barrett, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education and Special Advisor to the Dean, to discuss if it is safe to be back in the classrooms, how to ease student anxiety and how to support students who have fallen behind. 鈥淚 think the big problem right now is that there are a lot more anxious students than usual 鈥� students are dysregulated and the younger they are, the worst it gets because they can't cope as well,鈥� says Barrett, "There is all this back and forth, a lot of not knowing what's going to happen next, and I think that for a lot of teachers they will focus on what is regular, and that together, we can figure out ways to make everyone feel comfortable."

Listen to the full podcast at .

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Many young students are facing problems getting back into the swing of school after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to learn from home, where parents were nearby and rigid schedules were often replaced with loosely structured days.

Sarah Barrett, an education researcher and associate professor at 91亚色, said the pandemic also taught some kids how to be adaptable. As schools shifted from in-person to online 鈥� and back and forth again 鈥� kids learned flexibility and empathy, she said: 鈥淭he pandemic made it possible to understand that the whole world was going through something.鈥�

Barrett, who published a study on equity in online classrooms during the pandemic in March, recently reached out to the same 50 Ontario teachers she interviewed for that previous research to ask how students are adjusting to in-person learning.

Respondents mostly taught younger grades, though teachers of kindergarten to Grade 12 were represented. Barrett said the general consensus was that kids were 鈥済lad to be back, face-to-face with their friends.鈥�

Because teachers are used to addressing the annual summer slide, she said many aren鈥檛 concerned by lags in reading or writing. But they do worry about students鈥� mental health.

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Associate Professors Sue Winton and Chlo毛 Brushwood Rose have co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Teaching and Learning. The issue titled "Emerging Research on the Impacts of COVID-19 for Children, Youth, and Education features a number of Faculty of Education researchers.

Brushwood Rose and Winton say this Special Issue arose from and responds to the pandemic in more ways than one. With the declaration by the World Health Organization in early 2020 that the outbreak of COVID-19, a new coronavirus disease, was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and a global pandemic, children, parents, teachers, and researchers鈥攊ndeed almost everyone鈥攅xperienced a profound disruption to their work and social lives. The rapid spread of COVID-19 brought school closures, calls to shelter in place, economic slowdowns, and fears of sickness and death.

They explain, "many of us found ourselves reinventing how we worked and connected with others, and those who continued to go to frontline jobs felt the profound stress of literally putting their lives on the line. In many ways, this Special Issue emerges out of and tries to make sense of these changes to the everyday lives of children, educators, and educational researchers who must reimagine what it means to go to school, to learn, to teach, and to study these experiences." 

Access the Journal .

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Radio host Tina Cortese (105.9 the Region) speaks with Professor Sarah Barrett from the Faculty of Education at 91亚色 about the long-term effects and challenges in how and where students learn, will high school grads have a tough time in college/university this fall and what will the classroom look like in September?

which begins at approximately the 8:40 mark.

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The next session, titled "Racialized Implications of COVID-19 in Toronto: An East African Perspective," will take place at 10:30 a.m. EST/5:30 p.m. EAT .

The past year has presented unprecedented challenges to students and educators across the world. It has also provided new spaces of opportunity. This session will feature a panel of young people who are both activists and educational experts who work with , which is a collaborative, youth-led, community-based movement in Toronto鈥檚 Jane-Finch community that provides youth with holistic supports to complete their education and facilitate their trajectories of success. Panelists will discuss their experiences navigating schooling, scholarship, and community work amidst COVID-19, which has disproportionately influenced racialized communities like Jane and Finch where SBL is located. Panelists will also reflect on new possibilities for justice and connection that have emerged in Toronto, among East African diasporic communities and beyond.

The panel will feature:

• Kherto Ahmed, a fourth-year life sciences student at McMaster University, who founded McMaster鈥檚 first Black Students Association;
• Sam Tecle, an assistant professor of Community Engaged Learning at New College, University of Toronto, whose work focuses on Black and Diaspora Studies, Urban Studies and Sociology of Education;
• Ekram Maye, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student at Westview Centennial Secondary School, who is a past SBL mentee and volunteer, and current SBL mentor; and
• Tesfai Mengesha, executive director, Operations at SBL.

91亚色鈥檚 Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) Project, Faculty of Education, and Centre for Refugee Studies are partnering to present the "Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis" colloquium series that examines the intersections of refugee education, anti-Black racism, and COVID-19 in Canada and East Africa.

This colloquium is the first of its kind to feature experts from 91亚色 and from institutions that are comprised of or work with refugees in equal measure. Together, this series will: (1) deepen connections among refugee communities, educational leaders, and scholars within and across institutions; (2) foster a sense of reciprocity in learning; (3) recognize and validate the unique expertise that refugee communities bring to time- or resource-constrained situations; and (4) educate all attendees on a range of topics relevant to refugee education, COVID-19, and anti-Black racism.

Article from the April 5, 2021 issue of

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鈥淐OVID-19 and vulnerable migrants across Africa鈥� takes place on March 10 at 9:30 a.m. EST/5:30 p.m. EAT .

Moderated by 91亚色 doctoral candidate Mohamed Duale, the event will feature Helidah Ogude and Tamuka Chekero from the World Bank, who will share their findings from a World Bank-led social analysis of the risks and impacts of COVID-19 for mobile populations across Africa.

Refiloe Ogude, a South African-Kenyan national, is a social development specialist at the World Bank. Her work focuses on the development dimensions of migration and forced displacement, social cohesion and violence prevention, and the political economy of reform. She holds a MSc in international relations from New 91亚色 and is a doctoral candidate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School.

Chekero a Zimbabwean national, is a PhD student in anthropology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa and part of the Africa Fellowship Program of the World Bank, in the Social Development Global Practice. His doctoral research, based in Cape Town, interrogates mobility and conviviality among migrants from African countries. He holds an MSc in social anthropology from UCT, and a BSc honors degree in social anthropology from Great Zimbabwe University, Zimbabwe.

91亚色鈥檚 Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) Project, Faculty of Education, and Centre for Refugee Studies present the 鈥楻eciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis鈥� colloquium series, which examines the intersections of refugee education, anti-Black racism, and COVID-19 in Canada and East Africa.

This colloquium is the first of its kind to feature experts from 91亚色 and from institutions that are comprised of or work with refugees in equal measure. Together, this series will: (1) deepen connections among refugee communities, educational leaders, and scholars within and across institutions; (2) foster a sense of reciprocity in learning; (3) recognize and validate the unique expertise that refugee communities bring to time- or resource-constrained situations; and (4) educate all attendees on a range of topics relevant to refugee education, COVID-19, and anti-Black racism.

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Sarah Barrett, Associate Professor at 91亚色's Faculty of Education was recently interviewed by 105.9 The Region on the impact of online learning and the results of Barrett's survey conducted in 2020.

Through surveying teachers Barrett found that last year's sudden change to online learning affected the majority of teacher's as they did not have a chance to prepare for the pivot from face to face to online learning. "That was a major source of difficulty for both the students and the teachers," says Barrett. 

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