When second-grade teacher Abbie Schultz dials into Google Hangouts at 10 a.m. Monday through Friday, she’s typically greeted by eight second-graders smiling back at her.

There are 23 kids in her class.

While these distance-learning sessions are required, and only last about an hour and a half, Schultz said this low number of student attendance is the new normal. She said on a great day, she might have 12 students sign on.

At Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, where she teaches, the majority of families enrolled are low-income, with more than 80% of students qualifying for free lunch. The school is still handing out those meals, and Scultz said on the day we spoke that the school had handed out 3,072 meals on the previous Friday. “For some of these families, putting food on the table is coming first, internet service is second,” Schultz said. “Every couple days, I text the parents and remind them that [the lessons are] going on. We try our best to try and connect with them, but sometimes those parents don’t even have phone service.”

Until this week, she’d been told by school administration to report back on the percentage of children participating in calls and assignments. Since attendance was so low, now she’s been told to take roll each day and report back, so the school can reach out to students and families who haven’t been heard from at all since the school shut down.

For many teachers like Schultz, this means actual teaching has become just a fraction of their job description. The only adults most children are interacting with these days on a regular basis are their parents, and kids may want opinions and guidance from other adults. Rachel Budge, a fifth-grade teacher at John Baldwin Elementary in Danville, said students have been coming to her with questions about “anything and everything.” She’s been holding “office hours” four days each week, and she told them they can attend even if they don’t have an academic question. More students have signed up just to talk than those that are having problems with academics.

“I’ve had to balance my personal anxiety with having to put on a brave face for my kids and their families,” Budge said. “You’re so front facing to so many people. I have cried every single week since this has started and that’s not normal. I don’t normally cry because of work."

For Cece Cronin, an ELD teacher at San Mateo High School, she said she’s fielding a lot of questions about where students can get food or what to do if their family can’t pay rent. These are inquiries Cronin can’t answer right away, so she said she’s spending lots of time researching these types of subjects and putting together resources, such as links to local food banks. “I’m spending a lot more of my own time figuring out where kids can get food,” Cronin said. “I’m telling them they can call me with any questions at all.”

Cronin said she and her colleagues are spending an extraordinary amount of time just trying to track down students they haven’t heard from since the shelter in place went into effect. She said for some teachers, that means attempting to contact more than 150 students. If they don’t hear from students after a couple of attempts, they turn over communication to the school.

Cronin said many of her students are working (for example, in food service) or taking care of siblings during this time, which can take priority.

Many of her students are still learning English, presenting some unique challenges since many children can’t even articulate what their question is over email or what they need help with. It takes them longer to do assignments, since, for example, students aren’t used to reading directions in addition to completing assignments. She estimates that 20% of her students are doing most of the work and are benefiting from it, while 40% are doing some work and 40% are doing nothing at all. “The kids with the highest skill set and the most motivation are definitely continuing to learn and grow. The others just aren’t,” Cronin said.

Trying to teach really young kids virtually has a different set of challenges, as many of them aren’t experts at using a computer or even basic typing. Schultz said she quickly had to alter her expectations for her second-graders and give them more time to do certain work because of that.

While the upper grades at her school had used Google Classroom before, the younger kids hadn’t, so Schultz had to teach them from scratch.

Most teachers I spoke with were using Google Classroom (and singing its praises often), in addition to YouTube and a number of educational and teaching apps. The resources and aides are there, the trick is getting the students to take advantage of them.

Students that were already introduced to the tools are likely better off, according to Monty Worth, an economics and government teacher at Lowell High School in San Francisco. He said he started using Google Classroom years ago, and had switched his classroom to be mostly paperless in 2017. “I guess I was an early adopter,” he said. “I was already using Google Classroom, partly for efficiency and partly for ecological reasons.”

He said attendance to his Zoom-led classes was low during the first few sessions, but now he’s typically getting about 20 out of his 22 students to attend each day. He said one day recently, he even had 100% attendance.

Zoom breakout sessions have been perfect for group work in Worth’s classes, and he said they may even work just as well as they do in the classroom — Zoom even saves him time by doing that work of splitting up students for him.

Adam Michels, who teaches Advanced Placement Psychology and American Democracy at Lowell High School, also said distance learning has been going well in many respects, but he thinks it’s a poor substitute for interacting with students face to face in the classroom.

Being able to read student’s essays, or answers and give them immediate feedback has been a positive, though, as in a regular classroom, he would be taking time to give feedback on papers. He also said some students are too shy to ask questions in the classroom, but they may be more apt to ask them online.

What worries Michels most is motivation. While SFUSD has yet to decide how they will grade students this semester, one of the possibilities that the school board is considering is that every student receives an “A.” “If students think they can get an A or a pass by doing nothing, that's what many of them will do. Why write an essay on how democratic the USA is when you could be playing Valorant, the new video game that is the buzz of the gaming community, watching Netflix, or reading something that you choose to read? Students are human, and they respond to incentives the way the rest of us do,” Michels said.

There are also some elements of school that students will miss out on during this time, like certain projects or social situations. Michels said he does an interactive group project each year called “Urban Plan,” where students get into groups, design a neighborhood and ultimately make an oral presentation to professionals in the field showing their work. He said it wouldn’t be feasible to do virtually.

Jacob Strohm, a third-grade teacher at Argonne Elementary School, said distance learning has been going OK for him, but he attributes that largely to the work he put into building relationships with kids and parents before the shelter in place went into effect. When everyone knows and trusts each other, this may work, he said, but what about next year? “I already know the students so well, so it was easy to convert to this new way of teaching,” he said. “If we do this next year and I have new kids, I’m really worried what it could be like. It’s hard to establish new relationships.”

He’s also unsure whether the amount of work he’s giving his kids is the right workload. Strohm has a son at home who’s distance learning through his school, and he said he’s seen how a certain amount of work can be right for one student and their family, but not another. “Some families want lots of work and some families may be like, 'We dont have time for any of this,"" he said. “It’s so hard to have both those types of families in your class. The balance is really hard to achieve when you're not talking face to face and getting feedback.”

Doing what you know is your best is all you can do, Budge said. “It’s like you’re back in your first year teaching. You don’t feel like a good teacher,” Budge said. “You know you’re doing everything you can rationally, but I’d say emotionally, I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job. It’s been really hard.”

She also empathizes with parents, as she herself has a 3-year-old at home. “I try to do engaging activities with her and then cram in as much work as I can during her nap time,” Budge said. “I feel for the parents when they complain how hard it is to do their job and teach their kid at home since that’s what I’m doing, too.”

While work is important, Strohm said the social and emotional health of his students are the top priorities right now, and even instituted “wellness Wednesdays,” when he gives a little less work and makes sure to check in with students.

Schultz realized that social connection was so important for her second-graders when she caught them staying on her daily Zoom calls even after she’d signed off. She said they’ll often stay and chat with one another or show off their rooms or toys.

She said the community of the school is something that just can’t be replaced by distance learning. The day we chatted, she said she’d ended the day’s lesson with a “virtual hug” where the children put out their arms and pretended to give a hug through the computer. “They miss each other. They miss me. I miss them,” Schultz said. “I miss my school. I miss them so much.”

Tessa McLean is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her at tessa.mclean@sfgate.com or follow her on Twitter @mcleantessa.