The experiences of student parents pursuing a college education amid the COVID-19 pandemic was the focus of Thursday’s Achieving the Dream Student Parent Success Summit.
A number of leaders, speakers and attendees across all disciplines at educational institutions and community-based organizations participated in the five-hour Summit, providing equitable recommendations to develop campus programs/policies that support student parents.
Data at Ascend via the Aspen Institute — a national hub that supports children and the adults in t
That’s very much the case for student parent Yoslin Amaya Hernandez, who is a DACA-recipient and senior at The University of Maryland College Park (UMD). Her young boys are ages three and five.
Due to COVID-19, she has had to think about how to forge connections as a student.
“Do I want to do another [Zoom networking] event or spend time with the kids?” she asked herself. “But if I don’t take these opportunities, I am walking into an economy right now like it was in 2010.”
Because classes went remote for both her and her children, childcare was difficult to find. Hernandez’s typical childcare provider was a family member, but she’s been unavailable because she has had to tend to her own children as a result of the pivot to virtual learning.
