I Can’t Take 22,000 Steps in a Day

Ms. Clemmons is a science specialist in an urban Catholic school in Washington, D.C. Prior to the pandemic, she provided hands-on science instruction to students in grades K–5, engaging with each classroom 2–3 times per week. She described a typical day of instruction during this time as very physically demanding.

My normal school year would be 19 different classes, 19 different classrooms all on different floors, with a four- or five-minute transition time to go from place to place. So I could be in a kindergarten classroom and have to go to my office to pick up a change of books and materials and then run up to the third floor to teach a fifth grade class and then go to the opposite side of the building to a third grade classroom. And those would be back to back to back.

In the spring of 2020, Ms. Clemmons’ instruction immediately became online and asynchronous with the arrival of the COVID pandemic. This shift significantly reduced the amount of time available for science instruction, typically limiting her to one lesson per week with any given class. The shift also forced her to rely on videorecorded lessons that utilized materials students might have already had available in their homes.

Normally, the structure of those classes would be some foundation discussion about some sort of topic, and then we would do something, either an experiment or some sort of hands-on activity or an exploration. And there, I could not necessarily make the assumption that the materials that I would normally use were readily available to them. So a number of things had to be modified with household items that they could easily get their hands on.

When students and teachers returned for the 2020–21 school year, Ms. Clemmons’ school implemented a hybrid structure with half of the school coming for in-person instruction and the other half working at home on any given day. Although Ms. Clemmons was once again teaching in person, she was limited to third grade classrooms to prevent the spread of COVID across grade levels as much as possible. Because of her limited teaching schedule, she was also assigned a host of non-instructional duties, including cleaning/sanitizing and lunch and recess supervision. Although the situation wasn’t desirable, the change made her realize that her physically and instructionally demanding workload in previous years would need to change moving forward.

Physically, that COVID year was easier because I did not have to do that travel from class to class. I would normally log maybe 22,000 steps a day, and I didn’t have to do that at all because I was so embedded on the same floor as my office. I didn’t walk around as much. For me, physically, it was actually kind of nice. I feel bad saying that, but it was.

Ms. Clemmons took advantage of her extended time with 3rd graders during the 2020–21 school year, adding in activities and demonstrations focused on germs, specifically viruses and bacteria.

Talking about the spread, I would take a little handful of baby powder, and I had a little turkey baster type of thing to get a puff of air. And I showed that if you have that puff of air, like when you sneeze, how those germs can spread so far with powder. And then I did something with hand sanitizer. I just mixed hand sanitizer with a really fine glitter and then shook everybody’s hands. And even after you shake 20 children’s hands, they still get glitter on them.

However, even though she was able to cover an extended science curriculum with her third-grade classes, Ms. Clemmons found that students were generally behind academically due to the previous year of online, asynchronous instruction. Therefore, she found herself reteaching and reinforcing key science ideas that students should have already learned.

This year was a lot of going back and figuring out what important topics were never covered and incorporating or reinforcing topics with maybe some of their new work.

In the 2021–22 school year, Ms. Clemmons returned to what felt like a mostly normal school experience, as all students were back to school in person. Although she resumed her normal rotation of K–5 classes, teaching during the pandemic brought about some positive changes in how her teaching was structured. For example, Ms. Clemmons continued to incorporate lessons around the spread of germs into her instruction because she recognized the importance of these topics for students’ day-to-day lives, both now and into the future.

I think there’s more of an understanding as to the need for washing your hands. When you start to talk about it and bringing in touching glitter or seeing how baby powder expands, I think the visual is a little bit more powerful. And even something as simple as doing the germs with a bread sample and seeing how that grows with the right conditions and then really being able to refer to it in the future is important and useful.

Further, after experiencing what a school day would be like if she focused on one grade at a time, Ms. Clemmons approached her principal and requested to see all of the classes from one grade level consecutively. This change made Ms. Clemmons’ school day and travel around the building more efficient and manageable compared to what she experienced pre-pandemic.

At the end of 2021, I went into the principal and I said, “I can’t and don’t want to do that kind of traveling. All my grades need to be back- to-back.”