How Teachers are Coping?
- EDEL 445
- May 4, 2020
- 2 min read
I had the pleasure of listening to a podcast called “’There’s a Huge Disparity’: What Teaching Looks Like During Coronavirus” by NPR and I encourage everyone to go listen to it!
NPR interviewed 3 teachers as well as the head of a Baltimore school district to hear their experiences with the school closures and abrupt change of plans for the end of their school year. The teachers were distraught at the fact that they didn’t get to give their students a proper goodbye. More importantly, they showed great concern for their student’s safety, health, and education.
During the podcast, Cory Turner talks about the challenges that teachers are facing during this pandemic. Turner states “they’ve never had to do something this big, this fast”. These teachers literally left school on a Friday and thought they would see their students and teach their lessons first thing on Monday. Unfortunately, that is not how things played out. A lot of the students don’t have access to wi-fi or the technology to access their schoolwork. These students get paper packets of lessons and work for them to complete at home and turn back in, meanwhile, others are able to complete their work online and interact with each other and the teacher on a daily basis. This pandemic has truly shown the inequity throughout our country. This is hard for the teachers because they don’t want to see their students that they’ve watched work so hard all year, fall behind because of their lack of resources.
Another challenge that teachers are facing is how they can deliver meaningful content to their students who receive special education services. Ann Hibert, a special education teacher in St. Louis, shares her experience with NPR and says that she takes videos of her regular class morning routines and pictures of her class calendar and sends them to students or parents via email.
A speech and language pathologist in Connecticut said that technology has allowed her and her students to do almost everything they would in a normal session. She uses digital games and emojis to encourage students.
These teachers are obviously rising to the challenge. This pandemic has truly shown how innovative our educators are and their great abilities to adapt to their situations.
Overall, this podcast was very eye opening. It showed just how much our teachers care for their students and for all students. Our teachers are pulling long hours trying to create fun and interesting lessons and activities along with packets and phone calls. They’re checking in on each of their students every day or try to at least. They are doing their best to create meaningful lessons for their students and making sure they have all the necessary resources for the assignments or activities.
If you were to ask me how teachers are coping with the corona virus and school closures I would say: emotionally, they’re sad. They miss their students. They miss school. But instructionally, they are doing phenomenal!
-Mallory Beach
