Battling COVID Misinformation

Ms. Britt is the science department head at a small private high school in Georgia. Throughout her twenty years of teaching high school biology, she has always kept up with science-related current events. As a result, she was concerned, but not surprised, in March of 2020 when her school made the decision to finish the year virtually.

March 2020, everything started to come down with COVID. Although honestly, I imagine like a lot of science teachers, I was already aware that something was going on. We decided to go full virtual. I was trying to guide kids to the end of the year virtually.

The abrupt transition to online learning was challenging for both Mrs. Britt and her students. She described efforts to develop virtually accessible materials and deliver them in a way that would keep students engaged, while at the same time promoting academic integrity.

Getting assignments done, getting quizzes, getting tests, we had to revamp everything. . . . Kids aren’t bad, but even good kids, if you are not careful and don’t do everything you can to try to dissuade them, they’ll cheat. [Teaching] online is almost impossible. . . . Because you could insist, “Okay, I need to see your face,” but keeping up with who is paying attention, who you can see their faces, things like that, is difficult. . . . It’s so much more difficult to get difficult complex concepts across a screen.

As part of her online science instruction, Ms. Britt took opportunities to address COVID-related misinformation that was spreading through her community.

I knew that they were getting a lot of misinformation from all around them. And so as much as I could, I tried to relay correct information. I mean, not only that it’s going on around them, but it’s information they need to have.

Because vaccine hesitancy was prevalent in the community, Ms. Britt also used her science instruction to provide students with accurate information about mRNA vaccines and their efficacy. She explained that her aim was to encourage students to get vaccinated and reduce their fear.

My seniors, they’re going to be 18, they can get the shot if they want. I think some of them did against their parents’ wishes because they were like, “I think you know more about it than they do.” For instance, one of the kids told me, “Well, my parents don’t like the fact that the vaccine, they came up with it so fast.” And I said, “What you got to realize is that basically every virology lab in the world, and anyone who has anything possibly to add, has dropped everything across the planet. Tens of thousands of hours were spent in a very short period of time. We had a crisis of that magnitude, the world kind of pulled together the scientific community to get things done.”

As they transitioned into the 2020–21 school year, Ms. Britt’s school chose to adopt a hybrid teaching model where students had the option to attend school in person or virtually. In this arrangement, Ms. Britt was tasked with teaching both groups of students simultaneously, an arrangement that was less than ideal.

For the kids who were in the classroom, it was pretty much the same, except we were all masked and distancing from each other. And because of the masking, I probably went a little slower just to make sure that everybody knew what I was talking about. The kids online, like I said, trying to make sure they were paying attention. It was a lot of burden on all of us.

In addition to navigating the hybrid teaching model, Ms. Britt was still responsible for covering her biology curriculum. However, she still found time to weave COVID-related topics into her course units.

I would work COVID in as part of the topic. For instance, it’s an mRNA vaccine. We talked about that when we talked about transcription and translation during genetics. But I didn’t just derail. I mean, I got to have the kids prepared in the same way they were prepared before COVID at the end of each year. And so while I worked it in as much as I could, it didn’t change the overall sequence of topics that I taught or what I taught in each of them.

Ms. Britt also explained that she viewed COVID instruction as essential for addressing misinformation that was so prevalent at the time. However, she also received a lot of student push back.

I’d have kids say, “Well, I’ve heard this, and I’ve heard this, and then that.” You have to make sure to tell them, “No, that’s not how it works.”. . . There was addressing the misinformation, dealing with it, and sometimes having to say, “Here’s the information, but you have the right to make up your own mind about your own opinions.” Sometimes, just having to move on because that kid, for whatever reason, he doesn’t believe you, the pushback.

The 2021–22 school year brought all students back on campus for in-person instruction. Ms. Britt worked hard to give her students a quality education, despite the added time and stress of trying to follow COVID restrictions.

I was making sure that I gave them the same quality education that I’ve given students every year since I’ve taught. . . . Kids need me to get them to the end. Dealing with the stress of extra duties, of making sure that the schedule we’re on is actually going to work while we are under COVID restrictions. I mean, it was just so incredibly stressful. . . . You just had to stay late and make sure that what you had the next day was going to fit with COVID restrictions.

Reflecting on her instruction throughout the pandemic, Ms. Britt hopes that she has been able to provide accurate scientific information, both to her students and others in her community.

I think that there were a lot of people who came to me—teachers, students, parents, to talk about [COVID] because . . . I’m going to tell you the truth as far as I know it. . . . As a science teacher, specifically, I think that was a hat that we all had to don, whether we liked it or not. Because particularly for kids, we are their first contact for accurate information about science.