now that schools are closed for 80% of
students worldwide families and
educators are struggling to continue
lessons without a classroom but some
members of Brooklyn's Hasidic community
were experts in distance learning long
before coronavirus the Negri
international jewish online school has
provided remote education for jewish
families since 2006 we have 917 students
in our program and 126 of those students
are new since the pandemic
they've started sharing their tools and
methods since mid-march when New York
City closed the public school system the
largest in the world and we had 1,200
schools viewing that video tutorial
about how to set up a school virtually
as you see over here see this you can
move it around you could bring it to the
bottom you could make it fullscreen like
that it's difficult to quantify the
numbers of phone calls as every member
of our staff was receiving them some on
their personal lines some through the
office I would estimate that it's
somewhere near the the 1000 numbers and
my thought was okay how can we help them
the school was set up to serve the
children of Habad emissaries or sh
lookking who set up Jewish communal life
in areas where it has lapsed or has
never been established in aruba we have
in the Virgin Islands we have in the
Amazon rainforest we have classes going
on from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m.
18 hours a day I have four of my
children on it for many hours
my oldest actually started when he was
three and a half years old he's been
ever since instructors who also live
throughout the world teach Torah Talmud
and Hebrew language students start young
we were the first school to ever have
four year olds learning online they join
as a class every day the four year olds
and they continue all the way through
eighth grade where they graduate
elementary school through our program
Erica Riley provides therapy for infants
and toddlers with special needs a job
she normally needs to perform in person
when social distancing made that
impossible
she got a suggestion from some longtime
clients and they advised me to call
service and that's where I'd like to
speak to you see he kind of walked me
through everything
he sent me videos and tutorials he's
been on the running tax with me and also
phone calls but online learning requires
one major tool that is out of reach too
many millions of students in the u.s.
don't have internet access at home but
when it opened 15 years ago the Nigri
school didn't rely on the internet at
all so in the early early days we had
groups of ages children coming together
and they were learning on the phone
today they've developed their own
platform and have made it available to
schools affected by coronavirus closures
zoom is free but I felt that this was
something that was much better suited
for us simulating a classroom
environment this is a classroom and
right here this is the content area
where a teacher could upload like a
PowerPoint it was a very big adjustment
for our teachers you know the first day
was as they say was murder
on the third day one of the teachers
actually said you know I really like
this and the Nigri schools long track
record offers hope that students can and
will adjust to this way of learning
there's a lot that can be gained from
this and it's and it's phenomenal and
it's a happy place a school is alive
it's if it works beautifully
thank God okay girls let's get right
back you all did such an amazing job