Each morning at 8 a.m., on the West side of Rockford, Illinois, Julie hopes to see all 26 of her third-grade students’ faces. On a good day, 22 of them boot up their Google Chromebooks and log on to Zoom for the first lesson of the day. About half of her 9- and 10-year-old students woke themselves up this morning for a day of remote learning.
Julie teaches from her empty classroom in the second-largest city in Illinois, known for its blue-collar, manufacturing economy that has struggled for decades.
