Uniquely Prepared for Online Learning

When COVID emerged during the winter of 2020, schools across the country quickly moved to online instruction. Although this sudden transition was incredibly difficult for many teachers, one middle school science teacher in rural Pennsylvania was uniquely prepared for the situation. This is because Ms. Trudy had over 15 years of experience teaching at a cyber charter school.

As the traditional schools in the district closed for two weeks to prepare for online learning, there was little Ms. Trudy’s school needed to do differently. However, to remain on pace with these traditional schools, her school implemented a continuity-of learning plan. Under this plan, Ms. Trudy was required to spend a full month reviewing previously covered concepts with her 7th grade life science students, focusing specifically on topics that she felt would best prepare them for future courses.

So for the month of April, I did continuity of learning and reviewed concepts that were taught from September through March. And I really focused on main, big overarching ideas in science and concepts that would build into high school sciences. We reviewed cells again, plant and animal cells, cell processes, ecology concepts.

In May of that year, her district decided that teachers could continue with their usual content, and Ms. Trudy went back to teaching what she had initially planned for the end of the school year.

I think in the month of May they flip-flopped, and they said, “Oh no, you can teach regular content now.” So then the last quarter of the marking term, when I was teaching life science, we were teaching human body systems. So I picked up with human body systems and taught that through the end of the school year.

Not only was Ms. Trudy comfortable and familiar with online learning platforms and software, but her students also had the benefit of having used the same resources previously.

Everything was done online of course, but it always has been for us. So students still jumped into the learning platform that we used at the time, and all of that was kind of business as usual for me.

This familiarity with online teaching gave Ms. Trudy the luxury of some flexibility in her curriculum and some extra time to rework her curriculum to fit in COVID-related lessons. For example, using the CDC website as a guide, she discussed timely COVID-related topics with her 7th grade life science class, such as viruses and ways to prevent transmission. Ms. Trudy also noted that her students were persistently asking questions about the virus out of concern and curiosity.

[COVID] lent itself so much to life science and actually just because that’s what every kid kept wanting to talk about and everyone was so concerned about it. So we taught again about viruses and how viruses attack living cells. And we also talked about preventative measures, the hand washing, those kinds of things that were all on the CDC website. And so I used the CDC website and our school nurse as my resource on anything COVID related.

With the start of the 2020–21 school year, Ms. Trudy moved up to 8th grade physical science with the same students she had taught the previous year. Many traditional schools at that time were opting to do hybrid instruction. However, the challenges of this approach, including mandatory hygiene practices, quarantines, and frequent closings due to large clusters of COVID cases, incentivized larger than usual numbers of students to enroll in Ms. Trudy’s cyber charter school.

There were so many school districts in Pennsylvania that were closing the school for five days, then reopening it, and requiring masks, and then closing the school, and then doing this, and doing that. And so there were some parents who sent [their kids] to our charter school just because of the consistency.

Despite this uptick in enrolled students, Ms. Trudy and her students were able to proceed through instruction with relative ease. She continued to focus on COVID in her science instruction, even enlisting the help of medical professionals to teach about the topics of vaccines and immunity.

So when the vaccines came out, we went back, and we retaught about why we get vaccines, what vaccines do, how they help us build up immunity, the purpose of them, what other vaccines have they had, what’s their experience with vaccines, what do they remember about them. And so I tried to encourage positive talk around the vaccines and how vaccines help people develop immunity. So that was timely in 2021, in the spring. I had a nurse in as a guest speaker and that kind of thing, just because I think as health professionals, they had the most up-to-date information on everything.

However, even though her students were used to learning in an online environment, they still felt the effects of the pandemic. Ms. Trudy noticed that students were increasingly experiencing mental and physical struggles due to the ongoing presence of COVID in their lives.

I think from a mental health perspective, they struggled just as much as anybody else because they’re at home learning with their families and someone in their family gets sick or maybe a grandparent got COVID or their cousin got it. And then they’re very worried about it or they got it. Their whole family got it. And they were down for the count for two weeks. So I think it was as stressful as it was on everyone else. But due to their younger age it, may have been a little bit more so because they really didn’t know how to deal with that type of thing. I mean, nobody did. It was difficult for them.

For the 2021–22 school year, Ms. Trudy returned to teaching 7th grade life science. Although she was generally able to go back to “business as usual,” Ms. Trudy also continued to incorporate COVID into her instruction because she felt it was important and relevant.

Everything was business as usual, but we did cover viruses. I brought the nurse in, and she gave up-to-date COVID information, talked about the vaccines and boosters for the children, and things like that.

Additionally, as the school year progressed Ms. Trudy felt that her students’ mental health was improving as restrictions and severity of the virus decreased.

I think that they were doing better. A lot of my students were able to get the vaccine, and they did. I think that by then people had come to grips with it all and had a better understanding.

Ms. Trudy reflected on the fact that her experience teaching during the pandemic was unique compared to many other teachers across the country. She explained that interacting with her students regularly offered a reprieve from the pandemic, which in turn improved her own mental health.

I was thankful for the distraction of teaching. I was so glad that I was able to teach and have my job because I could focus on my students and not be glued to CNN and not see all these numbers and the graph of the death toll climbing. So I was thankful that I was able to teach and have that be my focus. At that time, with all that craziness going on, I could focus on something that was positive.

Ms. Trudy also noted that the experience of teaching during the pandemic highlighted the importance of scientific literacy and the need for science teachers who can provide accurate, timely scientific information.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s taught us that everyone needs a general understanding of science, particularly science that impacts human health like this and the relevance of it. It pushed science into the forefront a little bit. I think that, in general, we need to have a solid understanding of it. I still have a very positive view of science teaching in general. . . . I still think that we provide a service to our students and our students really need it.