In a photo, Josh Sanders stands behind a pane of glass as he looks out onto his deck where a skateboard and bicycle have been flipped over, seemingly untouched for weeks. From his mildly furrowed expression, Josh’s longing for the outside world is painfully apparent.

The self-portrait was the seventh grade student’s response to an art class assignment to create an image capturing how he’s feeling at this moment of social distancing. The move to remote learning has forced Sanders’ teacher, Keith Sklar, to shift his curriculum from exploring traditional art mediums to creating work using whatever students can find around the house for self-expression. “The artwork that I’m getting is pretty profound — it’s much deeper content than what I’ve often seen from students in school,” Sklar tells me.

Over the past month, schools across the United States have had to quickly shift to remote learning as they adapt to social distancing measures to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Educators are scrambling to teach themselves software like Google Classroom, Zoom, Apple Clips, Quizlet, and iMovie to create interactive content to help students at home stay engaged, follow along, and keep coming back to their virtual classrooms.

All of the extra effort isn’t just about reimagining their lessons for the digital age, though. Despite the many tools at teachers’ disposal, many of their students aren’t able to connect due to a lack of computers, stable internet connections, or support at home to keep them focused on schoolwork. And even when they are able to log on, students still struggle in a variety of ways to follow along in their new learning environment — something teachers are finding that no amount of apps can help them resolve.

The pivot to distance learning has exacerbated equity issues among the American student body. Only 56 percent of households with incomes under $30,000 have access to broadband internet, according to Pew Research Center. Where students are located also presents connectivity issues, with kids in rural areas unable to connect to mobile hotspots and cellular service from their homes.

Even when there is stable coverage, some families simply lack the laptops, tablets, or other devices required to log online. In the days leading to citywide school closures in New York City, Brooklyn-based language arts teacher Simone Rowe said she and her peers rushed to identify students who did not have access to Wi-Fi or laptops at home. “The move to digital learning has been very hard especially with the population that I serve — over 90 percent of students need free or reduced lunch,” she says. 

Though they were able to lend more than 200 laptops to students, they still struggled with making sure students could sign on and teach themselves the necessary digital classroom software to access learning materials. About 1 in 5 of the school’s 320 students hasn’t logged on. “Some students are ‘skipping,’ some can’t get on,” Rowe said. “Others have been sleeping and don’t wake up on time, some are displaced and moving around different family houses.”

Even with her school providing devices, Bay Area high school science teacher Allie Sherman says that class attendance has dropped to 60 percent since the move to distance learning. “Some households have no cellphone service so the hotspots don’t work. Many of the students are sharing devices with several siblings, including ones home from college, along with parents trying to do full time work at home on limited internet bandwidth. I know of students who’ve been driving to school and doing work in their cars using the school’s Wi-Fi,” she says. 

Broadband access has been an American problem long before the pandemic, with limited competition, high prices, slow speeds, and a simple lack of coverage affecting communities nationwide. About one-quarter of Americans lack broadband internet service at home, and that gap disproportionately affects those with lower incomes and education. Access also largely affects those living in rural areas of the country where little to no broadband coverage is available, making these households less likely to have multiple devices to go online.

For Rowe, that digital divide means some students have been completely out of touch. In the past, she says her school would make house visits to students who are logged as absent for more than a week. Now, like other teachers across the country hoping to get in touch with missing students, they’re relying on phone calls and student networks to find those who’ve virtually disappeared. Classmates have helped the teachers call, text, or reach friends through social media channels to confirm whether they’ve relocated. Sometimes the efforts lead to phone numbers of guardians who kids have been temporarily placed with while their parents continue to work government-approved essential jobs. Other times, teachers find themselves with full voicemail inboxes on the other end of the line.

To assist students who do not have laptops or internet access at home, AP psychology teacher Sarah Hillenbrand in Richmond, California, says she and other colleagues convene online to put together learning materials that a volunteer later prints and packages alongside the meals that students can pick up from school. Some teachers have also found themselves helping students source laptop chargers to replace broken ones or heading to school to retrieve books students left behind before the closures.

“Digital learning has transformed us into 24/7 teachers,” Rowe says. Most teachers The Verge spoke to said they’ve given students and their parents / guardians their personal contact information, offering to be reached throughout all hours of the day. Sherman says she’s received messages in the middle of the night from students struggling to focus on education during the pandemic.

“The students just miss each other, they miss school, and they miss us. They are craving interaction,” she says. “Many are profoundly depressed, they don’t know how to manage time and work throughout the day, many are emailing me at 12 to 4AM [saying] they cannot handle the workload without the structured timing of a classroom.”

Before the pandemic, teachers were already struggling with students spending too much time on their smartphones and computer screens. But now that students are forced to rely on them for access to their education, teachers are also trying to prioritize wellness into their curriculum to ensure students aren’t spending their entire lives digitally.

Kyle Jones, a physical education teacher who programs K–12 courses, has focused his remote lessons around personal well-being, with his peers recording videos to offer students different ways to work movements into their day. “Our approach has been more about giving resources and opportunities to move with limited to no equipment,” Jones says. His roster of content includes yoga, tai chi, martial arts, pilates, meditation, and simple footwork games kids can play with their family.

Teachers at his school have been recording themselves using GoPros, smartphones, and laptop cameras; Jones says he clips his GoPro on a fence where he films himself performing bodyweight workouts and teaching younger kids how to play hopscotch on the driveway. The teachers then edit the videos with Apple Clips and iMovie and upload them to the school’s Google Sites landing page. Some videos also feature the teachers’ own children exercising alongside them.

Tech companies have made various games and teaching tools available for free to educators, but some teachers say they feel overwhelmed with the “wall of possibilities” that comes to their inboxes every day. As part of Hillenbrand’s psychology class, she’s made personality quizzes students can take with their family members and check if the results accurately reflect them. “There’s a lot of attention-grabbing things we can do, but I think simple is better.”

While it would be easier to link out to YouTube videos and professionally designed apps, Jones says it’s more impactful for the students to see their teachers and stay engaged together through their shared limitations. “I think it’s so important the more you can make it your own and continue to allow students to see you,” he says.

English and math teacher Kelsey Rosby has also been making herself as visible to students as she can. Rather than just assigning work and making herself available for online chats, she’s live-streamed herself annotating poetry on various platforms like Twitch and Google Meet during what would be their normal class periods. Rosby says it’s crucial that kids have the opportunity to speak with each other to discuss anything they’re feeling, whether or not they’re related to her curriculums. “I’ve been running daily emotional check-ins in a Google Chat with all my 6th graders. I do very little talking in that chat, and we usually take an hour or so to chat, to make sure everyone gets a chance to vent,” she says.

Still, Rosby feels limited as to what she’s able to do for her students’ mental health. “It feels like we are doing much, much less than what would normally happen during a day at school,” she says. Even in her attempts to reach students through platforms they are most likely to be familiar with, she knows that there will still be kids whose presence disappears entirely, whether it’s due to web access, emotional instability, or a coronavirus-related illness. “Despite my best efforts, I am so worried about each of them.”

The tech gap isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. The Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission have begun urging states to put $16 billion in educational aid built into the CARES Act toward remote learning. But even if that happens, it’s unlikely to be anywhere close to enough. States are seeing large revenue shortfalls due to the pandemic, leading some states — like New York — to look at billions of dollars in education budget cuts alone to close the gap.

As teachers scramble to get in touch with as many students as they can, they’re also trying to find moments to celebrate small wins given the extraordinary circumstances. In Sklar’s art class, he continues to be impressed by the complexities his students bring to their digital assignments. “The strength of teaching art is you can really tap into students’ empathy and self-awareness from their own perspectives that we don’t get to see in the classroom. It’s such a profoundly awful way for something like this to happen,” he says.

Though many of the artworks have dark undertones, like an image of a student’s world on fire or a drawing of a student and their friend wearing face masks with a ruler forcing them to be six feet apart, they’ve also helped to generate valuable, thoughtful discussions among the young peers. “There’s tremendous amounts of self reflection in their work, and it’s incredible to see,” Sklar says.

While distance learning has been a struggle for both teachers and students, Rowe also says that she is not dismayed. She knows that she and teachers across the nation are working under extreme limitations, and they need to be kind and understanding to themselves if they’re going to be in this for the long haul. 

“Every time a student gets something right, I get excited all over again,” Rowe says. “Sometimes a student might finish [class] and say, ‘Wow, this was fun today.’ Those are my small victories.”

Instacart workers are being wooed by orders with large tips only to find them dropped to zero after a delivery has been made, according to a new report by CNN. Instacart lets users set their own custom tip with each shopping request, but it also allows them to change it for up to three days after an order is completed to adjust for experience. Workers, however, claim that some users have been abusing this feature, baiting them with big tips to get their shopping requests completed sooner amid the pandemic rush — only to find the tip slashed afterward without much feedback.

One Instacart worker said their tip was dropped from $55 to $0 despite finding everything the customer needed. Another worker claimed their tip changed to $0 since they could not find toilet paper in stock, to which the customer described in the feedback report as “unethical.”

Many people sheltering at home are relying on grocery delivery apps like Instacart, Peapod, and Postmates to avoid waiting in line at supermarkets and heading into crowded public spaces. While demand for these delivery apps has been higher, workers also feel that they are risking their health in order to continue doing their job and find it “demoralizing” when they experience this form of tip-baiting.

“I don’t pretend to be a hero, like a nurse in a hospital … but I literally am exposing myself [to coronavirus] and when I return home, exposing my own family to the possibility of transmitting this disease,” Instacart worker Annaliisa Arambula, whose household relies on her job while her diabetic husband is unemployed, told CNN. “When you know that it’s somebody who’s just doing it to game the system and to get their order when they want it, it’s really frustrating.”

While there have been cases of Instacart users abusing the tip adjustment feature, the company says that it is uncommon and that, in March, workers saw a 30 percent increase in earnings from customer tips. To encourage more tipping, the company updated the app to remove “none” as an option for tip so that customers would need to manually enter zero to give no tip. The app also now defaults to the last tip percentage the user gave instead of 5 percent.

Instacart says shoppers who experience tip-baiting can report instances in-app, though some workers say this relies too much on their end and that the company should make a 10 percent-minimum tip mandatory for all orders during the pandemic.

Airbnb announced that it will now offer Experiences that are entirely digital so people who are practicing social distancing and staying at home can find activities to do remotely. The new Airbnb Online Experiences offers activities like bartending and cooking classes, virtual bike tours, Korean makeup tutorials, fortune reading, comedy shows, and drawing lessons.

When it launched in 2016, Airbnb Experiences was part of the company’s foray into transforming the rental platform into a full-fledged travel company. It offered tours, events, and activities hosted by local individuals and companies in cities around the world. Experiences was put on pause after major cities began closing nonessential businesses due to the pandemic and traveling, in general, declined. But the company is hoping that the online-only relaunch might give those at home something to do while giving local hosts a new source of income while their usual tours are temporarily shuttered. (Before today’s launch, various fitness instructors, musicians, and actors had begun hosting free classes and concerts online via Zoom, Twitch, IGTV, and YouTube.)

Each experience range from a few bucks to up to $65 per person per activity. Airbnb says hosts will still pay a cut of the Experience commission to the company as they did before to cover service fees and liability insurance, though the company has not yet clarified what this insurance covers with regards to digital-based classes.

In addition to classes and activities by local hosts, Airbnb has also partnered with a few organizations to offer free live activities catered toward elders who are at higher risks of contracting the virus to help them stay engaged while they are sheltering at home. Classes are hosted on Zoom, and Airbnb is providing approved hosts with paid access for free.

Peloton has announced that it will stop producing and airing live cycling and running classes until April 30th after an employee tested positive for COVID-19 late last week. The company originally planned to reopen its studios on Tuesday, April 7th, taking the weekend to deep clean its facilities.

“We have decided to pause live production at both our New York and London studios through Thursday, April 30th. In the interim, we will continue to monitor the situation as it evolves,” the company wrote in an email to subscribers. In the live classes’ place, the company will air pre-recorded classes as an “Encore” session that allows members to take a class during a specific time of the day and still race other members on a digital leaderboard. “These previously recorded classes offer a fresh Leaderboard to recreate a live experience — and you may even see your Instructors joining to retake some of their favorite classes.”

After the state of New York ordered nonessential businesses to close in mid-March, Peloton continued broadcasting live classes with a “skeleton crew” of just the instructor, production assistant, and cleaning member through the end of last week. (The company said it had gotten approval to continue operating as an essential business.) At-home users were able to stream those classes from their Peloton bike, treadmill, or through an app to use with their own equipment. The decision to host live classes had been met with mixed reactions by Peloton members. Some users say they appreciate having live content to work out to while they are stuck at home, and say those classes are helpful for their emotional health. Others have urged the company to stop filming entirely to protect the health of employees, especially since the headquarters was based in New York City, which currently has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States.

In addition to pausing live classes until the end of April, Peloton also announced that it would pledge $1 million to cover two months of content subscription — a $78 value, plus tax — for those who have trouble paying the monthly payments for their Peloton bike or treadmill. Those who have experienced unexpected financial hardship can apply to have their subscription fees waived here, though the company says coverage is not guaranteed.

An employee at Peloton’s New York City-based production studio has tested positive for COVID-19, the company said in a Facebook message to members late Friday night. The studio will be temporarily closed for a cleaning, though the message says production will pick back up on Tuesday, April 7th with “a skeleton crew.”

The employee is now self-isolating. Anyone they may have come in contact with is under quarantine.

While many connected fitness companies have halted production of live workout classes after state orders to shut down nonessential businesses, Peloton has continued to broadcast live classes daily — with anywhere from two to five new cycling and running classes a day, despite pleas from many Peloton subscribers for the company to halt filming entirely. After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered nonessential businesses to shut down in mid-March, Peloton said it was going to continue operating on a reduced schedule, with a maximum of two instructors at the studio daily and filming as a “closed set” without a live in-studio audience.

Peloton’s response isn’t enough, says some subscribers. They are still urging the company to stop filming until the lockdown is lifted by the state of New York. “Just f***ing stop. This is ridiculous. You’re at ground zero. There is no way to keep them safe,” Peloton member Kimberly B. wrote on Peloton’s official Facebook page for members. “It’s not worth it. Let them stay home. There is plenty of content for us on demand,” another user added.

Peloton has been filming live classes since its launch in 2014, and makes thousands of its videos available on demand in addition to live content.

Just yesterday, Peloton posted a note to customers that it was taking extra precautions for the safety of its live production crew and instructors, including sanitizing the studio after each class and sending private cars to pick up and drop off the crew needed to film a class. It also said it was sanitizing the cars after each ride.

Update April 6th, 2020 8:30 AM: An earlier version of this article incorrectly named a commenter from the Peloton members’ Facebook page.