Special Education in a Pandemic
Ms. Lockhart is a special education teacher in a suburban elementary school in New Jersey. Prior to the pandemic, she typically taught in a self-contained environment except for science, where she and a general education teacher co-taught both groups of students.
As a result of the COVID pandemic, her school rapidly shifted to virtual instruction in the winter of 2020. However, she and her students found it very difficult to make this transition, as her students were not equipped to navigate independent learning.
We were basically told to upload work into Google Classroom for our students. We were not even meeting with them via Google Meet. And as a special ed teacher, expecting my students to do work independently and handle it, that just wasn’t happening.
Many of Ms. Lockhart’s students quickly stopped engaging with the materials she was posting online. Further, without any personal interaction, Ms. Lockhart had no way to check for student engagement or understanding. As a result, her instruction essentially came to a halt.
Real instruction kind of stopped. We were posting things for the kids to do. Some of them did it, some of them didn’t. . . . There was really no real understanding of, “Are they learning anything from this?”
The 2020–21 school year brough significant improvements. Although many students were back to school in person, the school offered a virtual option as well. Due to personal health concerns, Ms. Lockhart opted to continue teaching virtually. However, in contrast to the previous school year, she was able to meet live with students over Google Meets. She also offered virtual office hours and was frequently able to meet with students one on one. As a result, she was able to hold her students to higher expectations and track their learning progress. Ms. Lockhart noted that, overall, her students thrived during that school year.
I am probably an exception, but my students did phenomenal virtually last year. Like I said, I was on students. If you weren’t in class, if you didn’t turn something in, I was calling your parents. And we talked about it as a class later in the year, and we talked about the pros and cons to virtual learning and across the board, the kids all agreed that having those office hours that they could meet with me one on one, was a game changer because whatever it was, whether it was science, whether it was math, whatever they were struggling with, I could actually devote time to work with them one on one, on specifically what they needed.
Even though her students were thriving in this virtual learning environment, Ms. Lockhart was concerned that they were lacking the hands-on science experiences they would typically get in an in-person environment. Therefore, she decided to donate her time and money to provide students with regular supply drop-offs so they had the materials they needed to engage more deeply with the content.
I did try to do a monthly porch drop where I would actually drop supplies off to students’ homes so that we could actually do something hands-on. I did the best I could to incorporate even a little bit of hands-on for them. . . . Just so much work and also money and time was involved. I live 30 minutes away from where I teach, so in order to do those porch drops, which I was not told I needed to do, but to be honest, in order for the instruction to be good, they needed to be done. So, that was me driving 30 minutes and then driving an hour and a half across town multiple times. It wasn’t like I’m all in the same neighborhood. I was all over the place.
Ms. Lockhart also dedicated herself to providing students with differentiated instruction, an approach made possible by her streamlined and efficient online schedule.
It was the greatest way to differentiate instruction that I’ve ever seen, because we just don’t have the time when you’re in school full day and you’re supposed to be teaching this curriculum at this time and for this length of time, and it does not give you a lot of leeway when you have kids who are maybe falling behind, so this was great.
For the 2021–22 school year, all students returned for in-person instruction. Ms. Lockhart was able to resume her pre-pandemic approach of self-contained instruction coupled with team instruction for science. However, she reflected on the fact that her students were initially very resistant to pushing into the general education classroom because these larger group settings were different from what they had been accustomed to.
When we started pushing into the gen ed class, it was strange because normally my special ed kids liked to be around the gen ed kids. But this group, they were a little annoyed that we had to push in. Maybe that is a result of COVID because the class sizes were smaller last year, so they were used to having more teacher support. And when we go into the gen ed class, it’s loud. There’s 30 plus bodies, and it’s not as easy for me to help them individually. . . . We’re spreading them out and trying to get them to work with model peers, so I don’t think they loved it.
Ms. Lockhart also lamented that the return to in-person instruction resulted in diminished student motivation, increased misbehavior, and overall stressful school days for her and
her students. She found this contrast with the year before to be frustrating and disheartening and expressed disappointment in herself and her teaching during this transition back to “normal” science instruction.
It wasn’t what it could have been for students and . . . you always, of course, feel a little guilty if you know that you didn’t do your best instruction. Especially coming down off of such a high from last year where the assistant superintendent is reaching out because she’s hearing all these positive things about me. You go from knowing that you’re doing a really, really good job to knowing that you’re just kind of doing a mediocre job. So, there’s that guilt a little bit, but trying to be gentle with myself and with my colleagues that we were just kind of adjusting back to being in person after not being in person, and that was difficult. It was a struggle for all of us.
