How parent students are coping--and how Clark College helps      

Being a college student during the COVID-19 pandemic can be tricky enough, but it becomes exponentially more challenging when you’re also taking care of young children whose school or child care facility has been closed or moved online.

About a quarter of Clark College students have dependent children. Many of these parent students have found themselves trying to manage their own studies while also serving as teacher’s aide for their children.

Clark 24/7 interviewed some of these parent students to find out how they are coping. We also spoke with Michele Volk, director of the college’s Child and Family Studies child care center, which has remained open during the pandemic to serve parent students and their families. Their responses, edited for clarity and brevity, are in the links below.

Note: These interviews were conducted in late 2020, when public schools in the region were still operating remotely. In the time since, some schools have partially re-opened.

Child and Family Studies Q&A

• Michele Volk: Child care during COVID

Parent student profiles

• Jessica Bull: “Take extra care to reassure them.”
• Samantha Golden: “You can’t be 100 percent all the time.”
• Moses Kimeli: “Eventually, it’s getting easier.”
• Monserrat Soriano: “This is not the way it’s supposed to happen, but that’s all we got.”