I Questioned Why I Was Even There

Mr. Flanagan was used to conducting multiple labs each week with his 7th grade life science and physical science classes in rural Oregon. So when the COVID pandemic caused his school to transition online in March 2020, Mr. Flanagan started scrambling to pull together some semblance of science instruction for the remainder of the school year.

That first month or so, it was quite chaotic to say the least. . . . I spent hours and hours every day trying to find material that I could use to present online or take existing material and adapt it to using online.

Though he tried hard to provide a positive learning experience, class attendance was very low, and of the few who showed up, even fewer participated actively.

Some students would pop in and out from day-to-day, but it was a small core of students that would show up. And a lot of them wouldn’t have cameras on. You might ask them questions, there would be no answer, so I’m not sure they were there. . . . And by the end, it was still the same core students showing up. A few of them had dropped in and out, but it was tough.

The 2020-21 school year brought new challenges. Students had the option of learning in-person or virtually, and Mr. Flanagan was responsible for providing instruction to both groups of students simultaneously. Although this hybrid teaching format was very difficult to navigate, he noted that his biggest challenge was student apathy, which was dramatically more pronounced than in previous years. Although students were physically present, many lacked motivation to put forth effort to complete assignments.

The kids didn’t want to work at all. . . . I would have 10 percent or 15 percent of the students turn in the lab, and so that was extremely difficult. . . . It was just like they showed up because they were told to be there and that was it. So that was extremely frustrating. I questioned why I was even there because at that point, it felt like I was just babysitting them for the hours that they were there.

Eventually, Mr. Flanagan decided the time and effort to set up labs wasn’t worth it anymore, so he stopped them altogether.

Halfway through [the school year], when the kids weren’t doing labs, I stopped doing labs. They take too much time to set up, too much time to grade. I’m like, “Why am I wasting my time when they’re not going to do it?” Some of the kids, they like to get back there and play around a lab, but not do the follow-up questions, conclusions, the thought process that goes behind it. And to me, at that point, I was just wasting time.

For the remainder of the school year, he decided to try some new approaches in hopes of engaging his students. However, the new strategies were also met with limited success. Mr. Flanagan indicated that he was increasingly frustrated and even began to question his own skill as a teacher.

There wasn’t a lot of learning going on, and I tried changing things around, trying different techniques and stuff. Yeah, it didn’t work. . . . It was demoralizing. Up to this point, I was a decent teacher. But going through this, it made me question why I was even there.

The 2021-22 school year offered a fresh start with all students back in the classroom. Mr. Flanagan began the year doing hands-on labs as he had prior to the pandemic. Unfortunately, he was once again disappointed by his students’ limited engagement with the material, so he stopped doing labs halfway through the second quarter.

The kids would ask, “When are we going to do another lab?” And I said, “At this point, we’re not.” I said, “You’re not doing the labs. You’re going back to the lab and playing around, but you’re not doing the follow-up work,” where, in my perspective, is when they think about what happened and explain and that type of stuff. And I said, “We’re just going to do some worksheets and lecture.”

But Mr. Flanagan is not, at heart, a “worksheets and lecture” teacher and believes that fully participating in labs fosters deeper understanding and critical thinking. Therefore, despite the challenges, he once again implemented labs at the start of the fourth quarter. Although student engagement was not optimal, he did see limited improvement.

You got a few more kids that were doing it. But when I say a few, I think I was up to about 50% of the kids turning in some work.

Reflecting on his teaching throughout the pandemic, Mr. Flanagan lamented that student engagement was disappointingly low compared to the work he put in to plan for and deliver science instruction. And despite his efforts to utilize a variety of teaching strategies, he felt that he consistently fell short. Worse still, he had the sense that the general public did not recognize his hard work.

There were a lot of people that thought, “You’re not doing anything. It’s just all online,” [not] understanding the time that it took to try to come up with material. . . . I wish they could understand, I guess, the difficulties of trying to get the kids back into a learning mode.

Overall, teaching science during the pandemic left Mr. Flanagan weary of the lack of return on his effort.

I think that was the most frustrating for me. Putting in the extra time, that was fine. But when you put in the extra time and then nothing gets done, it is frustrating.