‘Like learning a new language’: A New Orleans teacher draws on TikTok dances, poetry to help students learn online

To keep her first-grade students encouraged, Loreal Ivory led them in reciting Useni Eugene Perkins’ poem “Hey Black Child” every day during Zoom class.

By Trevon Cole

This profile is part of The Lost Year, a series documenting the stories of local K-12 students and educators as they return to in-person classes amid a pandemic. The series was written and recorded by fellows in our Spring 2021 Community Reporting Fellowship.

Loreal Ivory prefers teaching in a busy classroom. Before the pandemic, she encouraged her first-grade students at Langston Hughes Academy in Gentilly to get up from their desks and write on the board. Her lessons included singing, dancing and lots of call-and-response. Ivory said she felt like she had woken up in a foreign country when New Orleans schools went online last spring amid spiking COVID-19 cases.

“I basically had to learn how to speak that language,” she said. “The only way that you learn a language is by surrounding yourself with it. You pick it up from the people around you. Teaching virtually is similar to that. You know how to speak, you know how to interact with people, but you have to do it in a different way.”

Ivory got creative. She studied her student’s favorite YouTube creators for tips on how to keep children engaged online. Inspired by TikTok, she wrote her own lyrics to the hook of rapper Saweetie’s “Tap In” to remind her first graders and their caretakers to “log log log in” on the laptops and WiFi hotspots the school provided.

To feed their spirits, she joined students in reciting Useni Eugene Perkins’ poem “Hey Black Child” every day during Zoom class. It was important to reinforce positive messages amid the pandemic isolation and global protests over police brutality and racial injustice, Ivory said.

“I wanted students to know that they could still accomplish anything,” Ivory said. “It made a difference. Students believed in themselves, each other and their community more.”

Ivory didn’t set out to become a teacher. She grew up in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood and studied psychology at nearby Xavier University. She first stepped into a classroom in 2017 as a co-teacher with City Year in New Orleans. Ivory, who is Black, saw a need for more Black teachers in local public schools. More than 90% of public school students in New Orleans identify as people of color, and 80% as Black.

At the time, “I was looking for other people that look like me, that can help me and guide me and coach me,” said Ivory, who went on to join Teach For America. “I wanted students to have that same thing.”

The 2020–2021 school year was Ivory’s fourth year as an elementary educator. She has experience teaching kindergarten, and first and second grades. Still, nothing could have prepared her for teaching in a pandemic, she said.

“I learned more in this past year than in my first year teaching or even my first few years of teaching,” Ivory said.

Ivory said managing communication between families and the school has been the hardest part of schooling in a pandemic. During online school, Ivory texted caretakers each morning before sessions to thank them for helping their student log on and to let them know what materials were needed for class. She continued to do extensive outreach to parents and caretakers when her school shifted to hybrid learning in October 2020. That meant a lot of emails and phone calls home, she said.

“Making sure that parents understand what’s going on, that has to be the most challenging piece,” Ivory said. “But it’s also the most rewarding once you accomplish it.”

Ivory, a fast talker with a confident smile, stepped out of the elementary classroom this summer. She is now applying her teaching experience to help local high school graduates figure out their next steps as a success coach with Next Level NOLA, a local college bridge program.

The pandemic pushed her to challenge routine and get creative as a teacher, an experience she thinks will help her transition from teaching grade-school to supporting 18-year-olds. She’s already thinking about popular songs she can use to help Next Level youth think about opening a bank account or applying for a loan.

“I feel like my energy will still work,” Ivory said.

Trevon Cole is a Spring 2021 Senior Fellow and a writer based in New Orleans. He is currently training to work in the local film industry. He was born and raised in Thibodaux, La.

This story is available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read Lede New Orleans’ publishing guidelines here.

Support Lede New Orleans and its community-centered reporting by becoming a supporting donor.

To get weekly emails with New Orleans stories and events, sign up for Lede New Orleans’ newsletter.