TAYLORSVILLE — In the basement of a house tucked in a residential cul de sac, five students start the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, singing a patriotic song and taking part in a devotional and dual-language immersion instruction in Spanish.
That’s on top of digital coursework provided by the Granite District school the children attended in person before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The five children, who are cousins, are part of a learning pod led by their grandfather, David Torres, who is a certified schoolteacher, and their grandmother, Maria Luisa Torres.
Since the start of the school year, the children have spent four days a week at “Abuelo’s Academy,” where they participate in a structured learning environment that includes field trips, religious instruction and learning more about their Latino culture. Abuelo is the Spanish word for grandfather.
It’s been a gift to the children who have been able to spend precious time with their grandparents while engaged in learning and experiences they likely wouldn’t have had in school. It’s also been a safe learning environment far less likely to be interrupted by quarantines or contracting COVID-19, which gives their parents peace of mind.
“It allows us to be able to draw closer to them and we feel, they to us, as well. It’s allowed us to be able to see things about each of them individually that we wouldn’t have picked up any other way,” said David Torres, who retired from teaching in 2018.
“It’s allowed us to be able to teach things that they need to know, as well as we’d like them to learn,” he said.
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Laura Seitz, Deseret News
For example, the children are learning to write cursive, which is no longer taught in schools. But the Torreses said they felt it was important that they learn cursive because it will enable them to write faster longhand. “But also, if they ever want to read our journals, they’re going to have to know cursive writing because they’re both written in cursive,” David Torres said.
The children, one each in grades one, two, three, four and five, come from two families. They are, youngest to eldest, Eva Torres, Abraham Morales, Sara Torres, Julia Morales and Rebeca Torres.
Their small “pandemic pod,” as Maria Luisa Torres calls it, has made it possible for them to organize field trips, which are rare in public schools due social distancing requirements.
To supplement their lessons on explorers, David Torres organized a trip to Utah County by bus and FrontRunner. While en route, the children completed a worksheet that asked them to find landmarks such as the block letter on Y Mountain or to identify certain animals.
Once the commuter train arrived at the Orem station, the group hopped on a bus and visited BYU, ate lunch on campus and then stopped at the Creamery before racing back to the bus to make their connection to the commuter train.
“By the time it was time to come home, most of them, except maybe one possibly or two, were asleep,” David Torres said.
The students also took field trips to Tracy Aviary and explored along the Jordan River Parkway, which is near the Torreses’ home.
The children took a deep dive into the 2020 election, which culminated with each of them “voting.”
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Laura Seitz, Deseret News
While the Torreses made sure their grandchildren had fun experiences, the classroom was otherwise highly structured. David Torres wore a shirt and tie to school every day, even on field trips.
The students had their own desks, which the grandparents purchased surplus from Utah Valley University.
“All we needed to do with those was to clean them up and do a little painting on some of them, and then get the rest of grandchildren over to help us move them into the basement,” David Torres said.
“So they actually participated in setting up the classroom. We did that to get them excited and to also have them be part of the process,” Maria Luisa Torres said.
The Torreses had a banner printed that says “Welcome to Abulelo’s Academy, where we learn to be steadfast in faith and knowledge.”
The children have received grades from Vista Elementary School for their online schooling. In lieu of grading his grandchildren, David Torres employs an incentive program where the students earn “Abuelo bucks.”
As a dual-language immersion classroom, the morning session is conducted wholly in Spanish. If the students speak English during that time period, they have to return an Abuelo buck or two. They earn Abuelo bucks for working hard and attentively in class and exhibiting good citizenship.
The couple occasionally hosts a subasta, Spanish for auction, where the students can bid on items using the currency they have earned.
“I used to do this in the regular classroom but I didn’t realized all the great benefits that go with this particular exercise,” he said.
The children have to do math on the fly to determine how much they can bid or add up the money they pay for a particular item, most of which are purchased from a dollar store.
The auctions also give the Torreses a glimpse of how their grandchildren might handle money in the future. Some appear to be “savers” but there are others who “may have problems in the future as far as overspending,” David Torres said, softly laughing.
Even their granddaughter Eva, who is in the first grade, has become adept at counting by 10s, which is notable, considering she missed half of her kindergarten year when schools were shuttered to in-person learning due to the pandemic.
At a recent auction “she was just bidding with all the rest of the children,” Maria Luisa Torres said.
In many respects, the academy has tested the Torreses’ ingenuity in terms of equipping the classroom with instructional materials and supplies.
They have relied on newspaper inserts prepared for children. David Torres purchased a subscription to “My Big World,” a magazine published by Scholastic. Each child received a monthly magazine and the subscription includes video segments. The children’s favorites involve dancing, he said.
“These are little things that might seem insignificant, but we felt that it would help them to develop and to grow to become better citizens as well as better people,” he said.
That came on top of a reading calendar “and we have them do a book report every month with class participation,” he said.
Following the Granite School District calendar, the students are on winter break and will resume their studies on Jan. 5. The Torreses and their children plan for the grandchildren to return to their school on Jan. 19, the start of the third term.
So on the last day of school before winter recess, the Torreses hosted a Christmas party and served the grandkids tamales for lunch, a staple of their family’s Christmas celebrations. It was also their granddaughter Rebeca’s birthday so they had cake. They wrapped things up with a spirited auction.
David Torres ended the school day, as he has every day Abuelo’s Academy has been open, ringing a school bell given to him as a gift when he retired.
Come January, he will ring the bell the last day of the second term and the grandkids will return to Vista Elementary School, where they attend on permits to participate in its dual-immersion Spanish program.
But the Torreses plan to keep the academy intact because life with the coronavirus is so unpredictable. They hope the vaccine and precautions by the school will enable all students and educators to learn and work safely. But they are also aware of reports of a variant strain of coronavirus that has emerged in the United Kingdom that appears to spread faster.
“It will be their safety net. We’re not going to be dismantling our school as it is set up right now, probably until maybe even the end of the year. We’re going to wait and see. Just like with this pandemic, we’re all just feeling our way through it,” Maria Luisa Torres said.
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