LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Millions of students are taking classes online right now because of the pandemic. That is hard enough. But if you're homeless and have no computer, sketchy Wi-Fi and no quiet place to study, it's even harder. From member station KUOW in Seattle, Eilis O'Neill reports on how some of these students are coping.
EILIS O'NEILL, BYLINE: For her math homework, 8-year-old Mariana Aceves is learning how to subtract by counting backwards.
MARIANA ACEVES: Fifteen, 14, 12, 11, 10.
LORENA ACEVES: Try that one more time.
MARIANA: OK.
O'NEILL: Mariana and her mom, Lorena Aceves, are sitting on the bed in their 8-foot-by-12-foot room. It's called a tiny house, and it's part of Seattle's transitional housing, where people experiencing homelessness can live till they find a job and a place of their own. There's room for the bed they share, a TV shelf...
ACEVES: And a little, tiny plastic dresser. And then all of our clothing and our food goes underneath our bed.
O'NEILL: When Seattle schools closed, Aceves had to quit her new job because she couldn't find child care. She and her daughter have been holed up in their tiny house ever since.
ACEVES: It's the boredom and me trying to reach out and find resources, work, car, things like that, while also making sure that she's entertained.
O'NEILL: Aceves and her daughter have a tiny amount of private space. Other homeless families have no private space at all. Sixteen-year-old Capelle Balej is living with his parents at a shelter. They share a room with two other families, divided only by curtains.
CAPELLE BALEJ: My friends, like, come up to my bed space and ask if I want to play or something. If we have our own place, I can learn better.
MICHELLE AGUILAR: Whenever, like, I'm in, like, in the environment of it being, like, really loud, I tend to, like, read over and over and over and over the assignment.
O'NEILL: Seventeen-year-old Michelle Aguilar is part of KUOW's youth reporting program called RadioActive. Like three-quarters of families considered homeless, her family's currently living doubled up with another family.
AGUILAR: I can't really find a specific space where it's, like, quiet and calm and I can actually have Wi-Fi.
O'NEILL: Since her bedroom doesn't have Wi-Fi, she ends up in the living room or kitchen with the rest of her family.
AGUILAR: And they're - just, like, continue their chaotic life of, like, yelling and screaming and, like, playing music and listening to the TV and cooking.
(CROSSTALK)
TISHA TALLMAN: We're definitely very concerned with there being an achievement gap during this time.
O'NEILL: Tisha Tallman is the executive director of the National Center for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.
TALLMAN: The longer this goes, the more likely our children are to fall behind.
O'NEILL: And she says schools provide much more than an education. Many homeless kids get two meals per day there, and they rely on it as a safe and stable place to be.
MARIANA: Eleven, 10, nine. It's nine.
ACEVES: There you go.
O'NEILL: Back in her tiny house, Lorena Aceves is trying to keep her daughter's education on track with a strict schedule of math, reading and typing.
ACEVES: Even though this is frustrating, we are having this time together. And that's something, typically, that we don't have.
O'NEILL: Aceves says it's good to feel close to her daughter during a time she has to stay far away from nearly everyone else.
For NPR News, I'm Eilis O'Neill in Seattle. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.