Episode 1: "Suddenly, everything changed"
Isabel (left) and her older sister Luisa have grown closer during the pandemic.
““I thought it was going to be closed for like a week and we were going to get back to normal.”
By Isabel Gonzalez
Isabel Gonzalez reported this story as a freshman in high school. She lives in Brooklyn.
Roughly 200,000 — 20 percent — of New York City public school students have diagnosed learning disabilities. It can be very difficult for these students to obtain adequate support and accommodations, as learning disabilities are commonly misunderstood among the general public. Throw in a global pandemic and learning becomes even more of a challenge. In this episode, you hear my older sister Luisa’s story, from her early difficulties in school, to my family’s struggle to ensure that she received proper assistance for her learning disabilities, to the moment in March when Covid-19 forced everything to change.
This podcast season, “Students in a Pandemic,” is produced in partnership with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
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Music for this season includes original tracks from Brooklyn teens Lens Louis and Joshua Senior.