In the past year, we have gone through many, many changes and have experienced one of the most chaotic years in our memory. Students have debated as to which online system is better or if online is just better overall. However, the ones that took the brunt of the blow were the teachers. They had to spontaneously come up with a way to teach their curriculum in a completely different way in a matter of weeks and sometimes less. So, we decided to ask several teachers what they thought of the transitions, and how they dealt with it.
Question: What did you think of the abrupt transition from full in-person to full-online in the middle of March last year?
A: Mr. Geesaman (STEM) Given the short amount of time we had to plan, I think we did ok. The emergency nature of the situation forced us to go into it without as much planning as we should have had. I personally tried to decide the most important information to get across, and just tried to be creative to teach it in a completely different way than I had used before.
A: Mr. Anderson (Social Studies) It was a big giant train wreck because nobody knew how to handle that situation because it was something we had never experienced before.
A: Mr. K. Gladfelter (Social Studies) The transition clearly illustrated the struggle of using Schoology for virtual learning.
Question: What did you think about the transition from cohorts to 4 days a week?
A: Mr. Geesaman (STEM) My fear is that anything we learned from doing this hybrid model will be abandoned now that we’ve got back to ‘normal’. I think human nature is to settle back into what’s comfortable and forget the new things we learned in the transition process.
A: Mr. Anderson (Social Studies) I’ve always wanted people back full time, but the timing of only having it for one marking period is making it awkward.
A: Mr. K. Gladfelter (Social Studies) I like it better than the hybrid model for students’ and teachers’ mental health because of the face to face aspect.
A: Mrs. Benavides (Spanish) I think that it was fine because I had to be here anyway, but for the students, I think it was a good thing. It was also a challenge for students having deadlines moved from the end of the week to the day after assignments are assigned.
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