Mark Pierce and Celestina Rogers: How Schools, Shelters, and Service Providers Support Students Experiencing Homelessness During the COVID-19 Pandemic

We have stumbled into one of the largest accidental experiments in the history of education. The COVID-19 pandemic forced districts to flip their traditional instructional programming from in person learning to distance and hybrid models. This research will be an embedded case study bounded by a conurbation of southern metroplex cities, suburbs, and rural areas encompassing 11 counties and a population of 7.5 million. ​It will consist of up to 50 semi-structured, open ended interviews with shelter workers, parents, teachers, administrators, counselors, and students 18 and older. The study will seek to understand how the COVID-19 quarantine affected the educational and social emotional lives of students experiencing homelessness in multiple settings and to ascertain how the future of distance learning may enhance social and organizational capital for students who are homeless and highly mobile. How can education writ large enhance the positive aspects of this event while mitigating the negative aspects to help fill in the gaps in distance learning and involvement for the benefit of homeless and highly mobile students? The evolving educational landscape that is responding to the pandemic may reveal how connectivity can enhance social and organizational capital as well as how it creates deficits in social and organizational capital.