With kids in farm country headed back-to-school, rural broadband access is a bigger issue than ever before.
The poor quality of internet access in rural America has been an issue for a long time. The lack of reliable broadband has impacted farms, communities and the rural economy, and that was BEFORE the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now that kids in farm country are headed back to school, some virtually and some in-person, broadband access is a bigger issue than ever before.
In this episode, Jon talks with Elsie Wetzel--a school administrator, teacher, mother, farmer and Common Ground volunteer from North Texas--about how they’re making it work in these unprecedented times. Together, they explore the need to connect our rural communities, discuss the pandemic's impact on kids, families and rural schools, and share some important advice for staying grounded in the midst of all this uncertainty.
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Transcript
Elsie Wetzel:
We need the infrastructure to run internet that is capable. Everyone should have reliable internet access. It's baffling that we're in today's age and not everyone has reliable internet. We live 50 miles away from Dallas. It's not that long of a stretch. Why are we struggling to have it? That, to me, is mind-boggling.
Dusty Weis:
Hello, and welcome to Wherever Jon May Roam, the National Corn Growers Association podcast. This is where leaders, growers, and stakeholders in the corn industry can turn for big picture conversations about the state of the industry and its future. I'm Dusty Weis, and I'll be introducing your host, Association CEO, Jon Doggett. You can join Jon every month as he travels the country on a mission to advocate for America's corn farmers. From the fields of the Corn Belt to the DC Beltway, we'll make sure that the growers who feed America have a say in the issues that are important to them with key leaders who are shaping the future of agriculture.
Dusty Weis:
The poor quality of internet access in rural America has been an issue for a long time. The lack of reliable broadband access has impacted farms, communities, and the rural economy, and that was before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dusty Weis:
Now that kids in farm country are headed back to school, some virtually and some in-person, broadband access is a bigger issue than ever before. So in this episode, we're talking to Elsie Wetzel, a school administrator, teacher, mother, farmer, and Common Ground volunteer, about how they're making it work in these unprecedented times.
Dusty Weis:
If you haven't yet, make sure that you're subscribed to this podcast in your favorite app. That way, you can take us with you in your truck, your tractor, or on your next trip, and never miss an update from Jon. Also make sure to follow the NCGA on Twitter @NationalCorn, and sign up for the National Corn Growers Association newsletter at NCGA.com.
Dusty Weis:
And with that, it's time to once again introduce Jon. Jon Doggett, the CEO of the National Corn Growers Association. Jon, as hard as it may be to believe in a year where every month seems to last a year, summer's winding down, and fall's going to be here soon.
Jon Doggett:
Fall is almost here in northern Virginia. We had a hot, hot summer. It cooled off a little bit. It's been nice to get out and walk in the morning. Hey, you know what? If I could just go beyond walking around a little bit, it sure would be nice if I could just get out and be with other people.
Dusty Weis:
Oh, that would be something at this point. I've taken to channeling my energy into turning our back patio into a Wisconsin-style beer garden, complete with now the bistro lights hanging overhead and some speakers built into the walls. So all of my socialization takes place over a campfire right now.
Jon Doggett:
Wonderful.
Dusty Weis:
I don't know what we're going to do come winter.
Jon Doggett:
Just build a bigger campfire. Let's hope you don't need a big, big fire too soon, Dusty. But you know what? It's back to school time in America. Typically means that the kids are nervous, teachers are eager, and the parents, they're pretty thankful to get their kids out of the house after having them underfoot for the whole summer.
Jon Doggett:
But these aren't typical times we're living in. And while the emotions I've just mentioned are still true, I think I'd have to add another one into the mix, and that's apprehension. Because of COVID, school's going to be a lot different this year. Now, some schools, they have kids back in the classroom five days a week. Some it's all virtual. Some are doing a hybrid of the two. But they're all going to be conducting their classroom business a little different this year in an effort to keep everyone safe, and that's what's really important. We're talking about our kids. We're talking about our society. We've got to keep people safe.
Jon Doggett:
Kids, teachers, and administrators, they're going to be in masks. They're hopefully going to be socially distancing from one another, though, I have a four-year-old granddaughter. She doesn't quite get social distancing. So these kids are going to be leaning on technology like never ever before. And as we have seen so many times during this pandemic, we really see another one of those gulfs between rural America and urban and suburban America, and the problem is broadband availability in rural America, and it's been around for a long time, but boy, people certainly are understanding it a whole lot better now. It's a lingering problem. It holds farms and the towns that support them back, and that story has been well covered.
Jon Doggett:
But the problem of broadband access in small towns, it still continues, and it's still very much affecting how kids in rural America learn. So today's conversation is going to be a different take on the same problem, and I'm excited about this. I'm just delighted to have Elsie Wetzel on our podcast today. Elsie, she's a mom, she's a school administrator, she's a farmer, she's a Common Ground volunteer, she's from Texas, and she knows that the problem of broadband access is difficult across the country, and in some places in rural America, it's more difficult than others. Elsie, as the son, the father, and the husband of educators, it's an honor to have you on the program.
Elsie Wetzel:
Well, thank you, Jon. I appreciate that.
Jon Doggett:
Elsie, tell us about you, and tell us about your family. Tell us about your farm.
Elsie Wetzel:
I am Elsie Wetsel, like Jon said, and I live in North Texas. I'm in a small community outside of Dallas, and we are farmers, grain farmers, primarily. We farm around 7000 acres outside of Sherman, Texas, if you're familiar with the Dallas area. We are primarily grain farmers. This year, we had sunflowers for the first time in 10 years, but our primary crop is corn and soybeans. And it's my husband and his father that are the farmers in the family, and I support him as the go-getter. Yesterday, I brought him some ice cream on the combine because we are in corn harvest right now. And then, I have two sons. Reed is six years old, and Ryder, who is seven.
Jon Doggett:
And we talked before we started, and your sons are the same ages as my granddaughters, so I know that you've had some interesting times getting through the pandemic with those kids, and we're going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute, but tell us about your community, and tell us about your school, and what is your role at the school?
Elsie Wetzel:
I teach in a small, rural school outside of the Dallas area. It's called Gunter, Texas. It's spelled G-U-N-T-E-R, but we leave the T. We say our T is silent in Gunter, but our touchdowns aren't, because if you know anything about our community, we are state championship football players here in Texas, which is a big deal when you're in the South, and we run about a thousand kids in our school.
Elsie Wetzel:
My role is the ELL coordinator. I work with all of our students who English is not their primary language, and I'm also assistant principal, because when you work in a small school, that's what you do. You do lots of jobs. So I do both those things. And we went, with everyone else, after spring break, that's when the pandemic hit us, so we went remote during that time. And let me tell you, internet was a fun issue to tackle as both a parent and a school administrator.
Jon Doggett:
And you have a four-year-old and a six-year-old at home and trying to deal with that?
Elsie Wetzel:
Yes.
Jon Doggett:
And yes, I know I gave my daughter a case of duct tape to take care of that problem. So how has your community adapted to manage through this pandemic, both at school and in the broader community?
Elsie Wetzel:
Luckily, we are in an area that has not been hit as hard as, say, if you go 50 miles south, Dallas, which has been almost an epicenter here in Texas. But our own county has not had as many issues with COVID. We have a lot lower numbers, so that's been, first, a blessing in itself. When we said quarantine, we took it seriously, and we stayed home. As a whole, our community, I think in total now, we're at seven total COVID cases that we've had in our actual city, so that's been a blessing to us as a school because that allowed us to start back to school in a traditional setting. That's what we're doing right now. We did give every family the option to start remote, so we have about 15% of our families that are in a remote learning situation, and then the other 85% are actually coming to school.
Elsie Wetzel:
In March, it was a whole different situation. Whenever the pandemic hit, we went home, and we tried to roll out things as fast as we could so that families had the access that they needed to be able to get on the internet because we had over a hundred families that go to school with us that did not have internet access at their homes, so that was an interesting task to overcome when you're looking, as a school picture and in family and community wise, we believed in the stay at home order, one, two, we spent a lot of time together and bonding with the people who are in our immediate families.
Jon Doggett:
It's interesting, you mentioned that the figure 15% staying virtual and 85% wanting to have their kids in the school. And that's almost exactly the same percentage of the parents who opted one way or another at the school in Tallahassee, Florida, that my daughter teaches at. And I heard another teacher the other day say 15 and 85. And so it's interesting that seems to follow that.
Jon Doggett:
So how's it been raising a family that's very busy with two little boys ... How's that been in recent months?
Elsie Wetzel:
A lot of balancing. I became a stay at home mom overnight, which is not a calling I've had. I love my children, but for both of our sanity, both my husband's and my children's and my own, I need to be busy, so that's what I did. I kept us busy doing lots of activities, lots of fun. We did lots of learning at home. One thing I appreciate out of it, it's a different relationship I have with my kids, which is kind of crazy to say. They're four and six. But it brought us closer together. And even with my in-laws, who we see on a daily basis because my husband's job, we live closely together because they're both running the farm, it was nice to just have some time to stop because I don't ever do that, to stop and smell the roses, as you would say, and spend that quality time, so I appreciated that a lot with the kids, and coming back to school was a rude awakening for them, so we're getting over tears finally today.
Jon Doggett:
So how are your kids doing now? They're getting over the tears, but four and six, that ... Might a little bit of acting out?
Elsie Wetzel:
It was a little bit of acting out. I'll never forget it. We were probably a month in to the coronavirus, and we had been home for a month, which is abnormal, and my little loves Chili's. He loves to go to the restaurant Chili's. I don't know why it's his favorite restaurant to go to, but it is. And we were sitting there, and he was asking, could we go to the park? And I was like, no, we can't go to the park, but we can do this in the backyard. And he's asking me all these options. And finally he was like, "I hate the coronavirus. I just want to go to Chili's." It was so funny.
Dusty Weis:
Oh, man, that kid speaks for all of us.
Jon Doggett:
Yes.
Elsie Wetzel:
We finally had the restaurant ban lifted. I think we're at 75% still, where that's the capacity, so that was the first restaurant we went to. That's an abnormal thing to have the kiddos dictate the restaurant, but it stuck in her mind, so we went to Chili's for our first restaurant venture.
Jon Doggett:
Well, good. So what are they doing now that's different than the pre-COVID world, besides going to school?
Elsie Wetzel:
I think probably the biggest thing that we've done is we have a pool. We got a dog. That's a big deal. We got a dog during COVID, so they have learned to appreciate taking care of an animal, because that was a big thing. We've said, if you get the dog, then you're going to have to help take care of it. So every morning, my oldest brings him out and my little fills up his dog bowl, so adding some of those responsibilities and giving them, as you grow, you have more responsibilities in the family, and that's one thing they're doing different after COVID.
Jon Doggett:
And I will just give you a hint. When they get older, do not let them get dogs when they start high school because when they go to college, guess where the dogs go? So, all right, Elsie, how would you describe your internet service?
Elsie Wetzel:
Spotty, at best. So depending on where I am ... Actually at our farm proper ... So my inlaws live on the farm, and then we live off the farm a few miles away. They have okay internet. It's pretty decent. Once COVID hit and everybody was on the internet all day, it became very sluggish and not as reliable as it was before. But where we live, we live in a valley and lots of trees surround us, so the internet service there is just horrible. Satellite internet you can't get. We're at the very end of the line for broadband internet, and so if we stream Netflix, nothing else goes on in the house, or if I'm working on my computer, there's no doing activities or anything else on the internet, so it's a one-person stop shop, if that makes sense.
Jon Doggett:
Elsie, do you have any specific examples where your family had problems with the service while you're trying to do a lot of different things?
Elsie Wetzel:
I was continuing working, servicing all of my students during that time, and my children also had assignments that were online, primarily online. We couldn't do them at the same time, so we had to take turns for every thing. So if I was helping, and I worked with all of our Spanish speakers. I wouldn't call myself fluent in Spanish, but I do some communicating. So between working with my translators and myself, I spent a lot of hours helping parents troubleshoot internet issues. Meanwhile, my children couldn't really do their assignments. I had alternative assignments that weren't online, but the assignments that their teachers assigned online, I had to set aside time for that, so we basically took turns, and it made for long days.
Dusty Weis:
That sounds incredibly frustrating.
Elsie Wetzel:
It was, very frustrating. There were some days, I'm like, we're just not ... We're not going to do it. We're not doing it. So we would have no technology days.
Jon Doggett:
I've heard a lot of people having to just say, we're going to turn everything off, and it's amazing what that lack of speed does to folks. Elsie, how does broadband access for you and your community differ from, say, in Dallas? You're not that far away from Dallas. Is there a big difference in the service though?
Elsie Wetzel:
There is a large difference. Many of them have fiber optics, which it works much better, but even my friends that are in Dallas, I have lots of friends because that's where I was before I met my husband. I lived in Dallas proper, so I still have a large friends group, and we're all having kids and have children of elementary age, and they had lots of frustrations a lot of times because their school was overloaded and then their internet was overloaded because everyone was home trying to learn and work, and it was difficult.
Elsie Wetzel:
But they didn't nearly have the lag that I have. I can remember having some Zooms. I don't know about you guys, but I miss my friends, so we would have Zoom night at like 9:00, and I would be the only one that my internet was not working because we had been on it all day long. So I'm trying to do Zooms from my cell phone and get the little bit of signal I had. So they had better, but it was not as good as it should have been, thinking that they live in a large city.
Jon Doggett:
We did Corn Congress in July, and it worked very, very well, except for we kept having these pauses, and we had scheduled this and did not realize that we were scheduling it for the same day, July 15th, that everybody was submitting their taxes online. And you want to talk about overcrowding the internet. We certainly did that day.
Jon Doggett:
So we talked a little bit about what your school did. You went immediately into shut down last spring, hard stop, school from home, work from home, stay home. Did you have any other technologies that you used or any other tricks up your sleeve that you pulled out that were helpful?
Elsie Wetzel:
Because our families, we have about a hundred families that didn't have internet service at school, we actually got hotspots for all those families that work off of cell phone technology. And that's what we got for our families. We were not one to one in our district. A few grade levels were. So we got all of our internet, all of our iPads and our Chromebooks, and asked every family, if you need one, and we did an appointment of both hotspots, iPads, and Chromebooks to help our families, which was helpful.
Elsie Wetzel:
But unfortunately, those hotspots theY are run on cell phone service, so if you live ... You had to have it in a certain place in your house where you had the best cell phone service, and they were only at a 50-megabyte capacity. So if the kids did anything other than schoolwork, they did not have enough capacity to do their actual schoolwork, so we had to stop them from watching videos. We were making lessons and recording ourselves teaching. A lot of our teachers were doing that, and they had to stop doing it because our kids could not access it. A lot of our families couldn't because it took up too much megabytes.
Dusty Weis:
Elsie, did your district actually have the hotspots on hand, or did you have to go out and acquire those special?
Elsie Wetzel:
We had to acquire them. It took us to, after the first two weeks, we were a little more preemptive. My superintendent is very well connected in the state, and she saw the writing on the wall before spring break. So during spring break, it wasn't much of a break for the administrators. We were doing a lot of trying to figure out what we were going to do, and that's when we ordered the hotspots, prior to all the other school districts. And a lot of other school districts waited about two weeks out and it was almost impossible for them to get them. We worked with a company called Kajeet to get ours, and they run from a Verizon network.
Jon Doggett:
Elsie, how long have you been teaching?
Elsie Wetzel:
This is my 16th year in education.
Jon Doggett:
Sixteenth year. If you had to describe in a couple words, what is it like being an educator in this environment?
Elsie Wetzel:
Frustrating would be one. Frustrating. But it allowed for relationships that we didn't have prior to that. I am on a first-name basis with every ... I have 116 kids on my caseload, I think now, and I'm on a first-name basis with their parents. So I appreciated that part of it, the relationships that it built. I did parent nights and parent engagement nights and did those kind of activities pretty often during the school year, but it's a whole different level of relationships when you're ... Towards the end of the epidemic, I would suit up and go into their homes because we were trying to get kids to pass courses, and they were having internet issues. I couldn't answer it via phone. I went into their houses, so yeah, it built relationships that I didn't have before. So while it was frustrating, it also was rewarding in that aspect.
Jon Doggett:
But it took a lot of effort on your part and more than a little bit of risk, so thank you for what you've done. I have hired a lot of hot shot lobbyists in my career, but I still tell folks that what my wife and my daughter do is a lot more important than that. And I know the kind of money you make and the hours you put in. But thank you. That's what's really important to the next generation.
Jon Doggett:
Elsie, how's your mindset heading into this school year, and how is it different from previous years?
Elsie Wetzel:
I have a reputation on campus to be Miss Positivity sometimes. We don't call it Pollyanna, but sometimes, they may feel that way because I always try to put a positive spin, and I've had to think myself happy quite often. Like I want to get frustrated and be in the moment and say, "Oh, I just want to give up!" Like pull my hair out. Let's just ... Why are we still doing this? But honestly, a relationship with God and a little bit of time in the word gets my head in the right direction and going and taking a ride on the combine with my husband where nobody can get in touch with me has been also beneficial.
Elsie Wetzel:
But I think that's probably been the biggest thing is thinking yourself happy. A long, long time ago, I think I was 16 years old, I heard a preacher preach that, and it's been one of my mantras since then. Like life doesn't always give you lemons, but you get to choose what you make out of it, so that's what I've done with it. And I encouraged teachers, and when you work with the staff that I work with, it's pretty easy. It's like a family, so we always have each other's backs.
Jon Doggett:
But sometimes that's hard.
Elsie Wetzel:
Yes.
Jon Doggett:
I'm part of a fellowship group that talks about, you fake it until you make it. And some days that's all you can do.
Elsie Wetzel:
Some days I smile. That's what I tell them, like, I have a smile on the outside. You do not want to see what's inside my head.
Jon Doggett:
What are you hearing from other parents and their experience with distance learning? You said you are on a first-name basis with all of your students' parents. What are they telling you? And what are the positives? And obviously there's a lot of negatives, but what are they saying to you, and how are they dealing with this experience?
Elsie Wetzel:
Especially depending on which population we're talking about, but the ones who have a second language issue, many of my parents cannot speak English. It has been extremely frustrating because the communication hasn't been there. I try to send everything out in Spanish, but some of my parents can't read Spanish or read English, so it's been very frustrating and hard for them and overwhelming. And I've told them many times, take a breath, stop, we're just not going to work on this today. We'll come back to it tomorrow.
Elsie Wetzel:
But then they also, I feel like it's been good for them to see what their kids are actually doing in school, and it's been eye-opening for them and to understand their kids' own capabilities and what they're doing, so I feel like that's been a good thing, and I've had a lot of moms say, "Oh, I didn't realize my kid could do these things or how great they were at this." And putting some ownership back on those kids' plates and the parents' plates, for that matter, that they're kind of taking a more hands-on approach to their kids' education, which has been encouraging to us as educators.
Jon Doggett:
Short of developing a vaccine or waving a magic wand and having COVID go away, on the technology front, as a mom, as an educator, as somebody very involved in Common Ground and doing all those wonderful things, what would be the one or two things that you would do on the technology side that would make your life a whole lot better?
Elsie Wetzel:
We need the infrastructure, like we need the infrastructure to run internet that is capable to have the amount of population. We talk about feeding the population we have currently on earth and how that's going to become a struggle in the future. We need the infrastructure to be able to have internet. Everyone should have reliable internet access. That, to me ... It's baffling that we're in today's age and not everyone has reliable internet. We live 50 miles away from Dallas. It's not that long of a stretch. Why are we struggling to have it? That, to me, is mind-boggling. Someone, somewhere, we need to have one of those acts, Internet Infrastructure Act. It's a vital necessity in our time and age. Everything is on the internet.
Elsie Wetzel:
And now that COVID's happened, it's even become more of that push. So I think that would be the one thing is, is having the reliable internet, no matter where you are, and second, help your neighbor. I don't know where we kind of have fallen short on that. We don't help each other anymore. I've seen that firsthand as parents. You kind of close your door and you don't worry about the rest of the world, but while we have to be distant, I feel like it's important that we're putting in our hand and saying, "Hey, I'm a part of this fight, too, and I'll have your back if you have mine."
Jon Doggett:
Not having internet access is like not having electricity. And I remember my dad used to talk about when we got electricity to the ranch in 1947, how it just transformed everything. And a lot of people still, in this day and age, in particular, and some of our farmers, say, why do we need more internet access? I think COVID just proved why.
Elsie Wetzel:
Exactly. My husband would not be one of those farmers that says, why do we need more internet? He has iPads in every one of his pieces of machinery that I don't know what they all do. I mean, I could ask him, but there's tons of different things that they do. I'm like, why do you need another iPad? He's like, "Uhh." He gets it. I don't know. But we have tons of technology. I think that it's just a vital part. If it's already in our agriculture, the guys who you would think in the last ... My dad like has internet and has iPads, like he, I would have never guessed that. He kept his money in a sock drawer for a long time. As a child, my dad had his ... He was like, "I don't trust the banks." But we're there now. That's where we are. This is the age we live in.
Dusty Weis:
Elsie, you work firsthand with kids and kids that are coming up in a COVID age, and this is a strange time to be anybody in America right now, but certainly a strange time to be a kid. My wife and I talk all the time. We're glad that our oldest is only two and a half and probably won't have any memory of this. But when you talk to kids and families that are going through this right now, do you see this having a longterm impact, or are kids really more resilient than we give them credit for?
Elsie Wetzel:
I hope there's some resilience there, but I think it depends on how much longer this is going to last. Will this be a memory stamped in their minds for the rest of their life? Yes. I mean, I talk to ... My little sister can remember 9/11. It was something stamped. We live in Texas. We weren't directly affected by 9/11, but it's something that's stamped in her mind, and these kids were directly affected. Not everyone lives in the household that my children live in. This has been really taxing on our CPS and domestic abuse and child abuse areas in our community and definitely in Dallas County. So I feel like it just depends on the kid and what household they live in, one, but two, I think that the longer that we stay in this state, the longer those lasting effects will be. As an educator, that's my opinion.
Jon Doggett:
And unfortunately, and I'm very aware of it because my wife was a middle school and high school counselor, oftentimes educators, they're the first one to detect a kid that's being abused or a kid that is hungry or a kid that something is going wrong at home. And this pandemic, when you're separated from your kids, that's really hard to do, isn't it?
Elsie Wetzel:
It has been. That's kept me up a few nights, kept me up a few nights. And that was the first thing I, opening car doors is one of my favorite responsibilities to do, is being there to open the door and be the first face they see. And that was, I mean ... I went to my office after car line, and I may have had a few tears because it was just like exactly as an educator, what you needed, but seeing, okay, they're here, and they're safe. That was a big moment yesterday.
Jon Doggett:
I'll bet it was. I'll bet it was. So thank you for that.
Jon Doggett:
I'm going to ask one last question. And, first of all, let me thank you for your participation in Common Ground. What would you tell moms, the counterpart moms that don't live on farms and ranches, don't live in rural America, what would you tell them about what it is you as a mom and as an educator, as a farmer, what would you tell them about what's going on on the farm and in rural America with COVID, from mom to mom?
Elsie Wetzel:
Mom to mom, I think I would tell them, take this time and do what I did. I slowed down. It's okay. You think as a farm wife and someone who lives in rural America, everything goes slow, but sometimes we have just as busy lives, sometimes maybe busier. And I think that it's okay to take the time to slow down, enjoy the backyard view and laughter with your kids. Yes, it's been a stressful time. Yes, it's been hard. No, the internet doesn't always work. But in those moments, take the time to enjoy watching your children grow. I mean, that's why you brought kids into this world is to create beautiful little humans and so take the time to enjoy them.
Jon Doggett:
Well, great. Thank you for that. Thank you for what you do as an educator, what you do in Common Ground, and all the other things that you do. We really appreciate you being on, and I hope that the next time you and I talk, which I hope is soon, that there's a little bit better internet access at your farm and at your house and at your school, and that things are a little closer back to normal. So Elsie Wetzel, mom, educator, farm wife, Common Ground volunteer. Thank you so much for all that you do.
Jon Doggett:
And that brings us to the end of this episode of Wherever Jon May Roam. I'm Jon Doggett, and I am the CEO of the National Corn Growers Association. Thank you for listening.
Dusty Weis:
That is going to wrap up this edition of Wherever Jon May Roam, the National Corn Growers Association podcast. New episodes arrive monthly, so make sure you subscribe in your favorite app, and join us again soon. Visit NCGA.com to learn more or sign up for the association's email newsletter. Wherever Jon May Roam is brought to you by the National Corn Growers Association and produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. PodcampMedia.com. For the National Corn Growers Association, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.