Debbie Snyder, an education teacher at KATC, shared her thoughts on COVID-19 teaching with me. Snyder said it is hard for her to do group activities since students are separated by the A & B day schedule.
This teaching style has forced her to stop doing some of her research based strategies she normally likes to use in class. She also has few interactions with her students. Her daily classwork is going at a slow pace, but everyone is keeping up with it.
“I’m super impressed with our students”, Snyder commented in regards to working around this pandemic. She also mentioned that level 3 would be hard to teach. This was an hour before we found out we had pivoted to level 3.
She also mentioned “I am super impressed with the Kirksville teachers.” Snyder said teaching half of the class at home and half the class at school is hard enough, but teachers here are handling it well.
I asked Snyder what her thoughts were on the future of teaching, she told me she was afraid that these new developments would be the new standard for teaching. Regarding online instructions, Snyder stated, “They have told us to have it in the back of our mind”.
She also told me that she had some idea this would eventually happen. Snyder added that the administrators have done a fair job with the school year so far. She mentioned that other schools are not doing as much as they should to help prevent COVID from spreading around us.