By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
I spent my 22nd birthday signing a second-grade teaching contract at a local Catholic school, wearing a book themed mask. The principal showed me my large classroom from the 1950s, adorning many saint statues and crosses, and I examined the space with the newfound confidence of a teacher and career woman – not too long ago I was in college, doing fieldwork in classrooms that looked much like my own, with the names of other teachers on the door, but never my own. An overwhelming sense of pride enveloped me as I stepped outside of my own ego and nostalgically reviewed the hard work it took to get to this point, especially during a health pandemic.
I have been teaching for a couple of months now, and there have been many growing pains inside and outside of the realms of my classroom. I have eight students in the classroom and three that participate on Google Meets all day every day through our hy-flex learning program. This is my first real year of adulthood – I am no longer protected by the safe confines of my college campus and family. My program did not train me for the nuances of pandemic teaching, Google Meets, numerous applications and constant disinfecting, so I am maintaining a positive growth mindset, but sometimes it is difficult to divide myself between all of the elements of education. The older teachers in my school are struggling even more with the technology and some parents are unable to understand why these glitches in instruction are occurring.
In my years of student teaching in urban and rural school districts, I had projected the same energy with classes – unconditional positive regard and love, regardless of their academic levels and socioeconomic backgrounds. I do the same now, with my own students, but there is sometimes awkwardness with remote learners, and it is something I am trying to resolve daily. How can I connect with students through a screen and guarantee retention and social-emotional learning needs are being met?
In every teaching interview I had this summer, superintendents asked me how I would attend to the many anxieties and mental disturbances that students would have returning to school during a pandemic, as now more than ever, it is paramount to create a safe, consistent class environment. During the first few weeks I struggled to get my class to socialize, but found that having them present in “sharing circle” broke the barrier and helped students on the webcam to feel included in the classroom.
There is also a sense of gloom in that the students have to wear masks and social distance – even though they are used to respecting protocol at this point in the school year. One little girl asked me if they will be able to play with other classes at recess next year, and I answered with smiling eyes and a hopeful nod, but there are no guarantees. We have made the best of our circumstances and use the sports fields for outdoor instruction and small class sizes make social distancing easy, but there’s also a bit of sadness, watching my students try to speak to their friends from other classes from a distance. One little girl in my class brings a hound dog stuffed animal to recess and lets it wear her extra mask to prevent disease, and it struck me one afternoon how strange our new reality is, especially for young children.
Sometimes I take the students on virtual field trips, since we can’t go on any real ones this year and they pout their lips and say “I wish we could really go there!” In second grade it is impossible to understand the gravity of a worldwide health pandemic, and it is best not to scare them with too many details. We have an isolation room upstairs for students for fevers and COVID symptoms and that concept terrifies my young learners – this is all so new to them.
Through this historic time and my first year of teaching, I remain hopeful and loving – what these students need is positivity embedded into their subtraction facts and close reading activities, not an automaton throwing application codes at them. Every morning I do prayer dedication with my class and tell them all of the things I love about them and the class environment. The internet may not always work and my Google Classroom is not as organized as some of the other teachers’ in the school, but there is a clear essence of compassion in my classroom that cannot be beat. Hang in there pandemic educators!
Each month, the “So You Want to Major In…” column investigates a different field of study. Want to write about your major? Send an email to majors@cccn.us.
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