No masking resiliency
Kindergartners adapt quickly to the new normal of school since many don’t know any different
Most kindergarten students don’t know what school was like before the pandemic — all they know is what they do now. They keep their masks on all day and sit 6 feet apart. They know how to use computers.
Erin Cook, a kindergarten teacher at Kolling Elementary School in St. John, said her class is full of resilient students. While the school year was an adjustment for teachers and older students, she said younger students don’t know any different, which has proved to be a benefit.
“It was different for us, for teachers, especially, because obviously we have been in a school environment before a pandemic, so trying to navigate during a pandemic was a little bit challenging for us,” Cook said. “However, with the younger kids … because this is their first experience with school, this was like any other first day of school for them or beginning part of the year for them, because they don’t know any different unfortunately, but kind of fortunately, too.”
Cook said she was nervous about how mask breaks would work with a class full of kindergartners, and she wasn’t sure where they could go to keep the kids socially distant, or if the students would be able to stay that way when they took their masks off.
“It was actually the kids that taught us how easy it could be, and how easy it is, actually,” she said. “They’re fantastic about keeping their masks on, they don’t really ask for a mask break. Wearing a mask for them is like wearing shoes, so to take them off, they feel a little weird — it’s just part of what they do and how they do things and this is fine for them.”
Cook said in the classroom during online work, students usually use iPads. When the district switched to online learning, the class used Chromebooks instead, which the students had never used before.
Since her students were used to tapping on the screen of an iPad to move between things, Cook said she spent days teaching her students how to operate their Chromebooks, taking frequent breaks because the amount of work they needed to do would sometimes hurt their small hands.
“I made sure we had four or five days where we just focused on operating a Chromebook, because they didn’t realize they couldn’t just tap the screen and move from one app to the next, they had to actually click and drag and use a mouse,” Cook said. “That was really challenging because their fingers got tired, because they don’t have the fine motor skills yet.”
While the students don’t know any different, Cook said she has had to adjust to a different classroom and different procedures, like not having volunteers in the building to help with things such as reading groups or classroom parties.
“All of that kind of fell on us, which then we realized, we always knew how important having volunteers in the building was, but this just made us appreciate them and their help even more,” Cook said. “We really miss having the hustle and bustle in the hallways and kids seeing their parents and being so excited that their mom or whoever their grownup is in their life is in the classroom with them. We miss that.”
Jamie Norris, who teaches kindergarten at Jonas E. Salk Elementary School, spent the entirety of first semester teaching online. Merrillville Community School Corp., recently announced it would continue with online learning until at least February.
Norris said she finds that her students, too, are resilient. They adapted to the online semester quickly and are like “little sponges.”
While the kids adapt and learn through the pandemic, Norris said one of the biggest challenges she’s faced as an educator this school year has been staying connected to her students. She sends her students rewards, like fun little erasers, in the mail, and sees them every so often when they come into her classroom for testing, but it’s nothing like it used to be.
“I have to see them once in a while,” Norris said. “I think I’ve made good connections with them, but it’s just not the same.”
Last school year, Norris said packets full of work were sent home with students because some didn’t have the devices needed for online learning. As school districts across the state worked to accommodate with the teaching and learning situation amid the pandemic, Norris said a bulk of the work for her students during the fall semester was done online through programs like Seesaw and Boom Learning.
“I’ve learned a lot of technology, it’s been a real learning curve for me,” Norris said. “I’m old school, I’m hands on. It’s frustrating I have a cabinet full of manipulatives that I can’t really even use. We did send a packet of some things home to the kids, but it’s just not the same.”
As the school year goes on and second semester begins, Norris said she thinks it’s important to remember that the whole world is in the pandemic, so kids across the board may be experiencing different forms of education, thus making people think they could be falling behind.
“We just have to encourage them and be positive with them because they’re little and it’s probably hard for them to understand exactly what’s going on,” Norris said.
“Making those connections with our kids is what’s most important to me, just that they know that they’re loved and everybody is trying to help them, and that it will be OK.”