Pandemic pause
With new school year in sight, many teachers still aren’t sure what comes next
During a typical summer, even the briefest notion of the upcoming school year is an unwelcome thought but this is no typical summer.
As the highly contagious COVID-19 virus spread across the country earlier this year, school administrators shut down their facilities and switched to online learning. Modifications were made, lesson plans were altered and mics were left unmuted but soon, teachers, students and parents learned to adjust to this new model of learning. And it worked. The growth of COVID-19 cases began to decrease. Today, a recent uptick is prompting concerns that a temporary change in school scenery is going to become more permanent. While that potential scenario has left many students — and their working parents — uneasy about the upcoming school year, it also has increased anxiety about what comes next for today’s teachers.
“I think we’re all waiting and yes, it’s incredibly frustrating,” says Paul Newell, a fourth-grade teacher in San Diego, California. “It’s not just that schools haven’t made a call yet, it’s that there seems to be no real direction. I’m just hearing about options now from my principal, and I know her hands were tied because of the district, the state and the federal government.”
The delayed decision-making may be understandable, though, considering the mixed messages coming from the government and the disparity in coronavirus cases in states across the country. While the Centers for Disease Control has issued guidelines for re-opening schools, the consensus among teachers we recently surveyed seems to indicate that a decision needs to be made sooner than later.
When asked in mid-June if their school had announced plans for this fall, 79 percent of surveyed teachers said they hadn’t heard, 17 percent said they learned they would be returning to the classroom and 4 percent indicated they would begin the new school year online.
While the majority of teachers look forward to returning to the classroom, not everyone is on board with returning to their respective schools just yet. While 41 percent of the surveyed teachers aren’t willing to delay a return to an actual classroom this fall, 29 percent said they would be willing to teach online the first semester while an additional 30 percent said they’d be willing to teach online, but only for a limited time.
As many parents of younger children learned this spring, teachers are forced to continually modify their approach to keep their students engaged. “It’s been an adventure, lots of time on Google Classroom, lots of emails from parents, lots of phone calls, but I think we figured it out,” says Dana Mendez, a fourth-grade teacher in San Antonio, Texas. “I want to get back in the classroom but there’s going to be an adjustment period for the students and for the teachers. I’m worried about some behaviors my kids picked up during their time at home. I’d have kids eating, pulling up their shirt and playing with their stomach, making faces at the camera — a lot of goofy things they’d never do in the classroom.”
Hands-on or hands-off
Several teachers mentioned the difficult nature of teaching younger students online but were still concerned about a return to the classroom. “Younger children are physical and tactile learners. Social distancing will be next to impossible for them,” says Tricia Boyle, a third-grade teacher in Chicago. “How can we minimize contact? They also need to share materials, I will sanitize but will that be enough?”
Day-to-day activities will have to be adjusted for most subjects. “Our district emphasizes guided reading groups for all grade levels. This requires a teacher to sit at a small table with groups of four to six students at a time in close proximity. Often there are two groups going at the same time, while students who are not involved in the groups work independently at their desks,” says Chris Kissamis, a junior-high English teacher in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. “I just can’t see this being a safe learning environment at the present time.”
And let’s not forget a typical student’s tolerance for wearing a mask. “My students get frustrated when they have to stay in their seats for an extended period of time. Now put a mask over their mouth? It’s not going to be pretty,” says Lana Rodriguez, a second-grade teacher in Los Angeles.
Rodriguez says she would prefer teaching both online and in-person until the pandemic passes. “I could meet one-on-one with students or in small groups once or twice a week in the classroom while continuing our online learning,” she says.
But one thing is certain: Rodriguez wants out of her house and back into the classroom, regardless of whether she’s teaching online or in-person. “I can’t take anymore teaching from home,” she says. “It’s too hard. I need my classroom.”
Team effort
Creating a safe classroom environment will require more than assistance from just teachers. In fact, considering the necessary changes, most educators say schools would need financial assistance, administrative support and parental cooperation for any return-to-school effort to have a chance at success. “For us to put all the necessary things in place, districts would have to pay to hire more teachers, psychologists and social workers. Yet they won’t,” says a high school counselor in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. “Right now we have 32 kids to a classroom. How do you social distance them? How do you stop the kids hugging in the hall or the boys from horseplaying? How do you enforce that when some parents now go after teachers or administrators for telling their kid ‘no’ or correcting them?”
Angela Fields, a retired high school teacher in Orlando, Florida, who still fills in as a substitute, says schools should be cautious about making large-scale changes. “I’m worried if I school gets a grant for $500,000 to make the school less vulnerable to viruses, they would put in barriers and doors and rooms-within-rooms that won’t be anywhere nearly as effective as students wearing masks and constantly washing their hands,” Fields says.