November 2020
Jonesboro, Arkansas - 2020 has been a year of changes for millions of Americans. Just like the rest of us, our children’s teachers have been facing huge challenges, figuring out how to do their job in an entirely new reality.
Just three months into the new year, America found itself in the grips of a pandemic.
As the possibility of schools closing down became a reality, educators in Northeast Arkansas, and around the country, were figuring out how to navigate a new normal.
“You’ve heard the old saying, ‘we’re building the plane as we’re flying it,’ that’s what’s going on,” said Dr. William Cheatham, assistant superintendent of Jonesboro Public Schools.
Early on, when the idea of virtual school became a reality parents everywhere were worried.But our local educators were up for the challenge, facing it head on, each school in their own unique way.
“When you teach all the subjects it was almost impossible to do all of those lessons and cover all subject areas without just being completely exhausted,” said Valley View kindergarten teacher Sarah Horton. “So, we broke up into groups just kinda what we thought we were best at.”
“We’re really kind of handling two jobs in one, where some school districts may have done it differently, we didn’t have the ability to have teachers dedicated solely to virtual,” said Blytheville Middle School math teacher Scott Corbin. “So, we’re having to do both jobs, having to do normal, face to face interaction with students every period and on top of that handle all the virtual students and all of the technology and difficulty that comes with that.”
For every school, each grade and different students, teachers have had to find ways to make it work, because it’s definitely not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ situation.
“Valley View school district has decided to do virtual Mondays. K-2nd is choosing to do every other Monday as a virtual day,” said Horton. “We just felt like younger children need in-person instruction. They work best that way we saw that when we shut down how crucial that is to be in person so we chose every other Monday. Grades 3 through 12 take off every Monday for virtual days.”
Districts are all taking different approaches, but every teacher I spoke with agreed that additional preparation time has been key to making this work.
“We started the year at the end of dismissal we had about 30 minutes at the end of the day to do those lessons. But, 30 minutes is just not enough, it’s not enough to get ahead, we didn’t do that for very long before our district decided let’s, our teachers need some help.”
“Administration decided to add a pivot day where we get a pivot day once a week now where all of our students will be virtual,” said Corbin. “It’s basically a day for teachers to kind of dedicate toward our virtual students, lesson plans, and things like that because we’ve lost so much time throughout the week. With having to do so many different jobs at this point that we need that day to catch everything up.”
Through all of the changes, the teachers and administrators have learned quite a bit this year. From reorganizing lunch schedules to reworking bus routes, each school district has implemented new systems they now plan to adopt permanently.
“It’s one of those things, once you do it, you think, ‘how come we never did this before,’ said Dr. Cheatham. “We assigned certain buses to buildings. For elementary, they start at 8:10 a group might come at 7:30 and the second wave would come right at 8 o’clock or 8:10, depending on how long the route took. That decreased the number of kids getting off that bus at one time, but it also made just kids at that school on those buses. We’ve done that K-12 and that’s been great for lots of reasons.”
These educators know it’s not over, and in reality, virtual school may soon become part of the normal curriculum.
“Even when we return to normal I think this push to technology and this push to a digital age is here to stay in one way or another,” said Corbin.
“Virtual and digital school is not going away, it’s been around and now, we’ve been trying to get there for really about three years,” said Dr. Cheatham. “It just takes it takes unfortunately something like this to push everyone to get there.”
“We realize that kids can adapt they did it they’re good at it and at a really young age,” said Horton.
So many teachers are taking on double duty, working with more students or new classes, and venturing into unknown territory each and every day. It’s been tough, but they are staying focused the students and what comes next.
“Now we’re getting to kinda look back and say, ‘OK, what can we do better next year, not next semester,'” said Dr. Cheatham. “You gotta roll with it, but next school year.”
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