COVID19 has brought many changes to my world.\u00a0 From March when schools were dismissed from learning in a building, teachers were tasked with bringing in person dynamics and relationships to the screen.\u00a0 Much confusion in directives and state guidelines brought about a halt in education.\u00a0 Parents and students were confused with online learning, the expectations and the gap being laid in their academics.\u00a0 While NCDPI trying its best to be equitable to all students and students being children, grades were frozen and learning essentially stopped for most.\u00a0 My AP Chemistry kids continued to work (at least appear to be) since a major online test loomed in their future to determine college course credit.\u00a0 That in itself is another story with many sides, like all of the COVID stories for education.\u00a0 Teachers continued to push forward.\u00a0 They looked for videos that explained their concepts in multiple levels, they made their own videos when none would suffice.\u00a0 They grew their Google Classroom, held Zoom meetings at all hours of the day and into the night, to accomodate working parents, working students and internet availability.\u00a0 Some students joined in, many did not.\u00a0 Many would argue teachers dropped the ball, they frontloaded videos and stopped teaching.\u00a0 Teachers would argue they vetted those videos,\u00a0 placed them in order and held Zoom discussions and problem sessions and the kids had no incentive (the proverbial carrot and stick of grades).\u00a0 Now with COVID keeping our schools from opening up fully (the way all teachers really want it to open – as this is how they teach the best), teachers are faced with even more challenges.\u00a0 Trying to be upbeat and welcoming when much of the commentary for opening schools centered around teachers not doing their job from March to June.\u00a0 Teachers are struggling to figure out a way to teach their curriculum in way less time, with no manipulatives, with no in person group activities, without being able to let their students use the equipment they spent other summers writing grants to obtain.\u00a0 This opening of schools this fall brings many challenges many teachers just do not want to face with seemingly no support from their state or their communities.\u00a0 They will make choices to leave.\u00a0 To retire early. To seek jobs outside of the educational arena.\u00a0 This year will break many teachers.<\/p>\n
As for the challenges in my internship, there have been many.\u00a0 Time is the biggest one.\u00a0 With multiple furloughs, I am only getting started in my second week at Eaton in Forest City.\u00a0 They have been great though.\u00a0 They have made so many concessions and always seem happy that I am there.\u00a0 Trying to have conversations over loud equipment with all your PPE (industrial and Covid) has been very difficult.\u00a0 I have still learned quite a bit about expectations industry has for educators and the struggles they face with finding employees who will show up on time, everyday.\u00a0 Employees who want to learn and move forward with new possibilities offered within their company.\u00a0 Finding life-long learners in their employees is a challenge they face.\u00a0 As I continue this week and next with my internship, I hope to learn more, experience more and find a new fire within myself to keep moving forward in my educational career.\u00a0 I hope I can continue to fuel the fires for my students to seek the opportunities offered to them to learn, to want to learn, to become that life-long learner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COVID19 has brought many changes to my world.\u00a0 From March when schools were dismissed from learning in a building, teachers were tasked with bringing in person dynamics and relationships to the screen.\u00a0 Much confusion in directives and state guidelines brought about a halt in education.\u00a0 Parents and students were confused with online learning, the expectations and the gap being laid… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":633,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/633"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.kenanfellows.org\/2021-lrhinehart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}