Periodically Relating to COVID

Ms. Casey is a high school chemistry teacher in a suburban school district in Arizona. She was enjoying spring break with friends in late March when she received news that COVID had reached her town and they would not be returning to school.

We were on our two-week spring break, and I was traveling, and news comes out that COVID is this big thing. And we’re like, “Can we fly home? What should we be doing? What is going on?” We got home safe and sound, and they just didn’t open school again after spring break.

Following the decision to close schools and transition to online teaching, Ms. Casey’s district set new policies regarding instruction and teacher availability. The district also enacted a new grading policy aimed at making virtual learning more equitable for students who did not have access to devices or internet.

Our guidance was that we would be available to students on video for an hour or two a day and then just be available through email for the rest of the day. We weren’t allowed to give work that would decrease their grade. We were only able to give work that would increase their grade.

Ms. Casey spent the rest of the semester creating online chemistry lessons that she thought students would be interested in, focusing on topics such as energy production in car engines, power plants, and batteries. She also provided her students with a few lab activities that they could complete at home.

I tried to focus on what kids would find interesting and what they could learn about on their own, through guided research, through videos, such as how car engines work and how gasoline provides enough energy to make a car go. . . . I tried to have them do some at-home labs, and a couple of kids took me up on that. When we were learning about energy, I had them burn snacks at home, Doritos [and] Cheetos, and measure the temperature change of water, so a calorimetry experiment. But the number of laboratories we could do was extremely limited.

Ms. Casey initially did not include COVID in her instruction because there was limited information available. However, this changed as the semester progressed, and Ms. Casey eventually transitioned to explaining the chemistry behind things such as soap and hand sanitizer for disease prevention.

We didn’t have any real knowledge of COVID, so I couldn’t use COVID as a way to teach, but I started using it more as we went on. . . . We did talk about hand washing and hand sanitizers, about why soap is effective against COVID.

Although Ms. Casey did cover COVID in her instruction, she spent even more time focusing on her students’ social and emotional needs. She indicated that her goal was to help her students better handle the stress of the pandemic and to provide companionship for the students that needed someone to connect with.

We were talking about how they were coping. It was more mental health things that we were talking about—so social and emotional learning. I think the biology teachers did a little bit more of what viruses are and stuff like that, but I wanted to provide a little bit more of an escape, was how I approached the content. The kids who kept coming to the virtual class were the kids who wanted that connection with their teachers, wanted that connection outside of their classroom. So even if I was only providing companionship for a few kids, it was totally worth it.

The following school year (2020–21), Ms. Casey’s district continued with online instruction but required teachers to teach from their classrooms rather than at home. Teachers were also required to utilize a new video conferencing platform (BigBlueButton) that had enhanced privacy settings. However, Ms. Casey and her peers soon found that the platform could not handle large groups of students with their cameras on during the sessions.

We actually started completely online, and our principal required us to come to the school to do our virtual teaching, so I was in an empty classroom with my computer. We transitioned from Zoom to a different video conferencing platform called BigBlueButton. It was supposed to be safer and encrypted and stuff like that, but if too many kids turned their cameras on, it crashed.

And as an added challenge, students were becoming weary of online instruction. Ms. Casey found it very difficult to engage students with the content or encourage them to collaborate with one another in an online environment.

I tried to get students to work together in breakout rooms to learn science, but it was really hard to get kids to talk to each other in the breakout rooms, especially if they didn’t know each other previously.

In the spring 2021 semester, the school district transitioned to a hybrid schedule that alternated two groups of students between in-person and online instruction. This new arrangement required Ms. Casey to teach both groups simultaneously, which she indicated was an overwhelming task that severely decreased the amount of content she was able to cover.

I would have 12 students in my classroom, I would have the other 15 on the computer, and I would be teaching both groups at the same time, which was mentally and physically exhausting. The students during that year, probably only got 65 percent of the chemistry I would’ve taught them in a normal year.

Even with the difficulties the school year was presenting, Ms. Casey continued to discuss COVID with her students. In addition to talking about the chemistry of soap, as she had the previous year, she also talked with her students about the effectiveness of various types of masks.

We did talk about how masks filter in terms of particle size and intermolecular forces between the paper masks and the cloth masks once we had that data. . . . I also talked about more of the structure of the virus and why soap was able to break down the outer layer of the virus. . . . If we had a concept that related to the use of masks or the use of hand washing, I would bring COVID in as an example of this chemistry phenomenon happening.

By creating a link between chemistry and COVID, Ms. Casey was able to help students reason with the safety precautions that were in place and correct any misinformation.

They gained a little understanding of why we need them to wear masks and wash their hands, so some reasoning behind the systems that were in place. I think that they could also bring this information to their parents because there was so much misinformation out there.

However, as the pandemic persisted into the second school year, some of Ms. Casey’s students experienced COVID fatigue and began refusing to wear masks.

I didn’t get any pushback from parents about teaching about masks or hand washing or anything like that. There was some pushback from students. Sometimes they were just so tired of hearing about COVID, I think, and there were definitely some students that were very resistant to wearing masks.

The next school year (2021–22), everyone returned to campus, and Ms. Casey was eager to teach chemistry as she had prior to the pandemic. She quickly realized, however, that conditions were not “back to normal.” After some serious conversations with students about their experiences, she began to appreciate the many ways that COVID had impacted them academically, behaviorally, and socially.

Kids were not ready to learn at pre-pandemic levels. We tried to jump into what I wanted them to do. And after a few weeks, we had to have a circle time, “What is going on? Why can’t you guys do the things that I expect from you?” And they’re like, “We are stressed. We don’t know how to learn. We’re addicted to our phones.” Their brains were not ready to handle it, and they didn’t have any maturity over the last couple years. My juniors were acting like freshmen. My sophomores were acting like eighth graders and just the amount of behavioral issues and defiance, I had never had before.

Ms. Casey used information students shared with her to modify her expectations and meet the students where they were. She explained that this change in approach created a more positive classroom environment.

They were happy because we had that circle time. I needed to hear from them what they needed from me. And so, when we did slow down and make it a little bit more achievable, there was a sense of community in my classroom again. . . . It got a lot warmer and friendlier, and they were willing to work together better once I slowed down and lowered my expectations. They felt heard and cared for because they were.

Reflecting on her time teaching during the pandemic, Ms. Casey felt proud that she was able to use chemistry as a way of providing her students with accurate information about COVID. She was also proud that she was able to create a safe environment for students to ask questions, voice their concerns, and form their own opinions.

Students saw me as a trusted source of evidence. What was nice is they knew that because I had science knowledge and experience, they could get trustworthy information from me about the COVID pandemic. They also felt like I was a safe space to bring their concerns, whether their family was acting in ways that they didn’t know was safe, whether they disagreed with their family on vaccination, or anything like that. They looked to me as an expert to help them form their opinions and help them gather evidence to deal with COVID in their everyday life.