WESTLOCK – When school closures were announced March 15, St. Mary School principal Vance Nakonechny said he’d never experienced anything like this in his entire 20-year career.
Evidently, in his five years at the school, neither did Ty Snell.
He’s a high school math and science teacher at St. Mary. For him and all his colleagues, teaching online during the regular school year is unprecedented, but they just ended a week of it last Friday.
“It’s been different, for sure, but overall, it’s been a really positive experience so far. The students and the parents have all been really patient and excited to get going. That helps, when you’ve got people on board,” said Snell.
There’s been a shift in how St. Mary teachers organize their schedules and transmit them to their students.
“We send out an instruction sheet for the entire week and then the kids work off of that, whether that’s through Google Meets, we usually have a couple of meetings a week with everybody in the class. The kids also have assignments that they need to get done during the week, different readings. It depends on the week,” he explained.
Most of Snell’s students have internet access, but for the few who don’t, he leaves packages for pick-up at the school.
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There are perks to teaching virtually too.
“You can have everybody’s microphones muted so there’s not a bunch of chatter going on in the class.”
But that’s the same thing that makes the classroom environment a personable one, so Snell admits the personal connection with the kids is not the same.
The other aspect of an in-person classroom that’s missing now is the teacher’s direct insight into whether his or her students are understanding the material.
“We’ve been relying a lot on parents. … In a couple of cases, we know the kids are struggling and need some help with a concept, we are trying to be as accessible as possible during the school day or the school week for kids to e-mail questions or even do small group chats online if a couple of kids have the same question,” said Snell.
For a science teacher used to running labs, not just classrooms, YouTube has mostly replaced the practical side of Snell’s subject matter.
“There’s a few mini lab experiments you can get kids to do at home. Obviously, if you’re teaching something like Bio 20 or Bio 30, you can’t get the kids to do heart or eye dissections at home, which is unfortunate, but there’s a lot of good videos on YouTube that we can rely on to show kids those different practical uses of science.”
Other things still have to be worked on, and they have more to do with student-to-student interaction beyond socializing.
“The big thing is trying to find a proper way to do whole class or small group discussions, making sure that everybody can present their ideas or talk through things with their peers. That’s kind of a big part of schooling is being able to bounce ideas off of one another.
“We’re still working on all the kinks, making sure the students can find ways to do that.”
Most of the time, Snell is teaching from home, which helps with physical distancing. Staff meetings are also virtual, and teachers go to the school just for necessities.
As for the future: “Some of the students are talking about volleyball next year, and cross-country and golf, so obviously we’d much rather be in the classroom but if we have to stay at home for the first couple of months of the next (school) year to stop the spread of COVID-19, that’s just something that’s going to have to happen,” ended Snell.
Andreea Resmerita, TownandCountryToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @andreea_res
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