Despite All the Suffering of the Past Year and a Half, I’m Proud of What This City Did: We Are the City Spotlight on Breakthrough SF
By Andy Shin, Executive Director of Breakthrough SF
The COVID crisis was unimaginably challenging for our community. In the months after everything shut down, more than three-quarters of our families lost income or work, some of them struggling to put food on the table. For over a year, the vast majority of our students attended school remotely and grappled with the learning loss and isolation that came with it.
When shelter-in-place started, Breakthrough paused our programming, assuming we would be back in action a few weeks later. But as weeks started looking like months, we came to realize we would be grappling with COVID for the long haul. We moved our school-year program online and started to prepare for our first-ever virtual summer. We also invested in tech and cash support, providing Chromebooks, hotspots, and gift cards to the families we serve. Unable to offer all the services we normally would, we put our energy into doing what we could and meeting the shifting needs of our students and families.
We learned a lot about how to run a program online. We found ways to use Zoom for classes, tutoring, workshops, meetings, college presentations, team building, office hours, and movie nights. On the best of days, our virtual program was nowhere near as good as in-person. Even so, I’ve been blown away by the commitment of our community. Our students kept attending, our volunteers and teachers kept participating, and our staff kept being resourceful. We did our best under tough circumstances and found the joy in it.
That level of commitment and resourcefulness is one of the things I know will continue to inspire me when I look back at this trying time. And, how valuable education is. How much our students will hustle to get to college. How powerful relationships are, that they can get us through the worst of times and, afterward, enable us to pick up where we left off. How important it is to take care of ourselves and each other, and not to lose sight of that even as we return to more normalcy.
Now, in fall 2021, we’re fully in-person at last (other than large community events, which are still on Zoom), and I’m trying to appreciate the small things that I took for granted before, like just seeing our kids face to face.
Our Commencement celebration for the Class of 2021 was one of the bright spots of the past year. Typically, we hold this event in our school gym, but that wasn’t an option given COVID restrictions (and it had been carved up into instructional spaces anyhow.) With a little legwork, we were able to rent a field in the Presidio. Holding this event outside meant logistics we had never worried about before, from a generator to a Port-a-Potty. Then the night of our Commencement turned out to be a “wind event” — blowing across the Bay, the wind knocked over our podium and flatscreen and blew one of the diplomas clear across the park, never to be found. I was shivering under a puffy jacket. But none of it mattered — we were just grateful to celebrate in-person with our high school seniors. With COVID restrictions changing week to week, I’m proud we stayed flexible and made the event happen.
Another highlight of our reopening were the Friday community building activities we hosted in the summer. Our academic classes were still virtual, led by our Teaching Fellows from across the country, so we blocked out Fridays to give our students a chance to see each other in-person. Over the course of a month, we learned about the murals in Balmy Alley, hiked through Tennessee Valley, looked at artwork at SF MOMA, and had an Olympics on our school playground. We ate sandwiches on the beach and in the park, played mafia and soccer, and had a water balloon toss. I will remember those Fridays as a time when we set aside academics and the worries of the pandemic, and just enjoyed being together.
Even in the darkest moments of the pandemic, I was grateful to be in San Francisco because we took care of people here. We were the first place in the nation to shut down. We had Safe Streets, an eviction moratorium, Community Hubs, and Summer Together programming. We had high rates of vaccination and low rates of hospitalization. Despite all the suffering of the past year and a half, I’m proud of what this city did.
Please share a song that comes to mind when you think of everything that has transpired for you or your program.
One song we played a lot during the pandemic at our virtual All-School Meetings was “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles. Just seeking out small opportunities to be hopeful.
