Online Instruction as a Barrier to COVID Instruction

During the 2019–20 school year, Ms. Morris taught 8th grade science at a rural middle school in Indiana. As COVID began to spread throughout the US, her school quickly moved to online instruction. Ms. Morris recalled how difficult it was to adapt to an online mode of teaching:

Prior to last year, we’d never had e-learning. . . . So I really felt like I was starting in the deep end of the pool, and it was a sink or swim kind of time. I didn’t have time to really figure it out, I just started doing it. . . . It was more of let’s just get by in the spring, let’s just do the best that we can with what we have to work with.

She noted the added challenge of trying to facilitate online instruction when her students didn’t have access to reliable internet. In her words:

We were running into problems of some students didn’t have internet, and then the internet was down in some locations. So it was not reliable initially to be able to say, “Okay, I’m getting [online] with everybody.”

Due in large part to these obstacles, Ms. Morris did not address the topic of COVID in her science instruction, choosing instead to devote class time to covering the required standards. As she said:

I didn’t teach on the topic of COVID. I have standards I have to cover, and we get only so much time. And then when the pandemic hit and I did not meet with my students, really I couldn’t meet with all my students, so when I did get them, I had to stick with my standards. And so, no, I never did talk about COVID. It was like, gosh, I don’t have enough time to open that can of worms.