Meeting Students’ Social, Emotional, Physical, and Intellectual Needs
At the beginning of 2020, Ms. Burton was serving as a 4th and 5th grade STEM specialist at an urban Tennessee elementary school. In this position, she was travelling to 4th and 5th grade classrooms during the school day for 45-minute STEM instruction sessions. However, after spring break, her school decided students and teachers would complete the rest of the school year online due to the COVID pandemic. Ms. Burton had already introduced the yearly science fair project that she typically does with students. Although students were learning remotely, she had them continue work on the project they had picked.
To begin with, I just had them work on their science fair projects. I really thought we would probably be back in school in May, so just work on their science fair projects.
Some of her students had decided to research COVID for their science fair project, which led to a lot of online class discussions about the virus. In fact, her students’ interest encouraged Ms. Burton to do a more structured lesson around COVID.
There were lots of questions about COVID, and so I felt like it was important for me to almost give a lesson and just say something about the latest CDC news, and this was what this means, and breaking it down into child-friendly things. But I was also trying to be transparent too, and just telling them not to be afraid and that this is the ultimate science experiment really. We’re working in this global Petri dish, so to speak, so it turned into a learning opportunity in my opinion.
Ms. Burton noted that the pandemic served as an opportunity to make science relevant for her students and for them to see scientific processes happening in real time. She found that talking about the virus with her students encouraged them to ask questions and make comments about things they were seeing unfold. The experience also increased student interest in science and helped them envision themselves in future scientific careers.
I felt like, first of all, this is science in real life. This is real time. Science is always evolving and changing and how science affects our lives and in so many ways. I know that there was one little girl that said, “When I grow up, I want to be that lady with a scarf.” It was that medical person that was always commenting on CNN from the White House. And so the kids would tell me which kind of scarfs this woman had on every day. It was so funny, but the career thing, that was really a neat little unexpected outcome. But just having the kids talk openly about what they knew, and parents appreciated the transparency and just having the kids having another outlet to talk to.
While Ms. Burton felt it was important to address COVID in her instruction, she also felt it was important to prioritize the students and their families. As students spent more and more time away from the school building, Ms. Burton became increasingly concerned with their well-being and ability to deal with the weight of the pandemic. As a result, she dedicated a lot of her time to addressing her students’ mental and physical health.
We talked to our guidance counselors, “Hey, y’all need to pitch in and talk if kids are having anxiety or if there are extra things going on.” And we were able to start food bags, and we put extra hygiene products in our blessing boxes, which usually have non-perishable food. Because there was a need. Kids were telling us, “Well, we don’t have Clorox wipes at home” or “We’ve run out of masks. What do we do?” And if you think about Maslow’s hierarchy, basic needs also needed to be met during the pandemic with these children.
As teachers were still figuring out how to meet student needs during this period of online instruction, the district announced that the academic year would end early. The fast transition to online teaching coupled with the shortened school year left Ms. Burton dissatisfied with the quality of instruction she was able to provide.
And then we figured out that the district was going to end school early. They were just going to cut it. So we did probably about three weeks’ worth of just rounding out the school year and [covering] some of the standards that I hadn’t gotten to that year. I just basically put it on Canvas5 and did some synchronous and asynchronous teaching. And I’ll just be honest, it wasn’t my best work.
In addition to the early end to the 2019–20 school year, Ms. Burton’s district made the decision to delay the start of the 2020–21 school year. She explained that this decision was made to provide time for teachers and administrators to set up their classroom and the mandated safety protocols, as well as time to prepare to transition smoothly from virtual instruction to in-person instruction.
We delayed the start, and we started in person. And once again, it was almost like pivoting and shifting gears again. We still use technology in the classroom, but we allow the students to take the technology home with them. . . . It didn’t take long for us to get back in the routine of the live experiments and doing things not so much on Canvas.
Pivoting back to in-person instruction came relatively easily to students, and Ms. Burton thought they adjusted well, having spent such little time learning remotely.
Kids adjusted a lot faster than the teachers did, I believe, and especially myself. It seemed like to me that students were just hungry for that face-to-face interaction.
Further, even with the limited online instruction the previous school year, teachers gained valuable experience that allowed them to meet the needs of students who were absent due to COVID. Ms. Burton reflected on the fact that course content could be easily accessed online, an opportunity she and other teachers would not have been able to provide prior to the pandemic.
The beauty of it is we do have lessons in Canvas and so we can do some synchronous and asynchronous. And then we also have swivel cameras, which basically follow the teacher as they teach. Let’s just say last year we had a child that had chickenpox, and so we were able to take that swivel camera in the classroom. and that first-grade teacher was able just to continue teaching with the swivel camera, with the live feed to the parents when they were doing ELA and mathematics and science and social studies. So it was a great tool to have, and I don’t think we would’ve thought outside the box before the pandemic about providing these opportunities for families that have sick children.
Despite an easy transition back to the classroom, Ms. Burton started to notice that students were not entirely fine. COVID was still a very real part of their daily lives, and as the year wore on, student behaviors started to deteriorate.
As the school year progressed, we really had to spend a lot of time on behaviors and getting kids acclimated to sitting in seats again and getting them acclimated to expectations for homework.
Students also began regressing academically, and Ms. Burton noticed that those students who had struggled with school prior to the pandemic were the most affected.
I feel that the top students were doing fine. But my kids, my most fragile, lower quintile of students, were on video games and sitting in front of the TV while virtual. I felt like they really regressed and not just in science.
For Ms. Burton, the pandemic highlighted the need for more social emotional support in schools and classrooms.
I feel like the pandemic shined a light on social emotional relationships, personalized learning, and some of these things that we talk about but probably weren’t doing in the realm that we are doing it now. And I feel like that, in essence, it’s made us stronger.
Despite the challenges of the previous two academic years, Ms. Burton went into the 2021–22 school year hopeful and prepared. Before the year began, she worked to put more resources on Canvas that students could access in any situation where they had to miss school.
We went ahead, just as a precautionary measure, we went ahead and put up a week’s worth of Canvas lessons. We loaded up just in the event, we don’t anticipate shutting down or anything of that nature, but it is nice to have . . . almost like sub plans in a way, but also with that, trying to do as much in person as possible at this time.
She also decided to expand her COVID instruction and made arrangements for the school nurse to supplement some lessons around germs and virus transmission.
Our school nurse got involved this year. We actually did some classes together and did some germ experiments, putting [GloGerm lotion] on your hands and how you touch all this stuff and then the [UV] light shines, and we’ve even talked about it this year about how, even though I asked just the other day, if anybody knew what the latest CDC recommendations were, and so a couple of kids knew it. And they’re becoming more, I feel like educated on the world around them, especially the scientific world.
Ms. Burton experienced not only hardships but also growth while teaching science during the pandemic. She reflected on how proud she is of everything she accomplished and the ways in which she helped her students. While some adults doubted science at the time, her students were able to grow their love for the subject and become more trusting of science professionals.
I feel like I’m just so proud looking back on it. Gosh, where we were at and then where we went. It was not a wonderful time. People were scared, but just knowing that the students trusted us to make important decisions. They were resilient, and this was actually a fantastic opportunity to highlight science. And I feel like I have several students that just grew in their love of science because so much of what we talked about [that was] news related was science related and then talking about misconceptions in science and how we use science to inform. There were really some positive things to come out of this.
5Canvas is a learning management system (LMS) that supports online learning and teaching. Schools and teachers across the nation rely on Canvas and other LMSs as a platform for posting information, assignments, videos, and grades.
