The Pandemic Is a Crisis for Students With Special Needs

Loretta Norris and Pat Kitchens—both teachers at The Monarch School and Institute in Houston, Texas, which serves students with neurological disorders and learning disabilities—also told me that they were moved by the moments of connection they’ve been having with their students. They’ve both been using Zoom and Google Classroom, meeting and playing games with students and just trying to keep them engaged. One of Norris’s students hardly ever speaks, but he loves to sing and dance; she put on music so that he could sing along, and the rest of the class moved around and acted silly with him. Meanwhile, Kitchens noticed that monarch butterflies were hatching from chrysalises in the milkweed in front of her house; she carried her laptop outside and sat down right in her driveway, so her students could see them too. Her class is made up of a bunch of “serious boys,” as she called them, but she could tell they were spellbound.

In some cases, this period of remote schooling may even offer advantages. “Some days I feel like they’re more connected, and doing more on a daily basis, than when they were in class,” Norris said, sounding both bemused and amused. “Maybe it’s just different and fun for them.” She’s been getting emails from parents saying how happy they are that their children are so engaged, that they’re even talking about school at dinner. And she feels like the whole class is getting closer, because learning from home is intimate: Moms and dads can say hi on the Zoom call, and students can introduce one another to pets and show their rooms and lives.

The very nature of neurological and learning differences means that many special-needs students find change and inconsistency particularly stressful; it’s harder for them to be flexible, to go with the flow. But that also means that this time of social distancing could be a particularly good learning experience for them. “They’re learning a lot about the world,” Kitchens said. “This is what helps them grow.”

No one yet knows what the long-term impact will be on special-ed students. Some teachers and researchers predict a major backslide in learning, that students will return to school having significantly regressed. This phenomenon already happens, in special-education students particularly, over winter and summer breaks—what’s sometimes called the “summer slide”—and the longer students are out, the more likely they are to fall behind. Researchers are already starting to see a “melt” of skills among students in general, which portends even greater losses among those with disabilities. Murray told me that she’s worried about her ASD students losing the social-skills gains they’d made, without any time to practice on the playground or in playdates.

But teachers, faculty members, and families might be more prepared than ever, when the dust settles, to make up for lost time with a renewed sense of gratitude and possibility. “There are all these memes now about families having new appreciation for teachers,” Kitchens said, “but teachers also have a new appreciation for the families.” At the end of our call, Monarch’s head of school, Patti Pace, jumped in—she wanted me to know how amazing her teachers are, and how lucky she feels to work with them. “When I look at my teachers and their students, and the joy and the love they feel when they see each other, I just get this pit in my stomach,” she told me. “The evidence is there when the kids turn on the Zoom, and they see their teacher’s face—it’s a celebration.”

Faith Hill is an assistant editor at The Atlantic.