Over the course of six months, people have seen their lives turned upside down. From wearing masks to limiting their contact with friends and family, the Coronavirus has affected everyone in one way or another. One of its victims has been teachers and students, now confined to the domain of an online learning system. With social distancing guidelines in place, it would be difficult to attend school containing hundreds of people in one place, at one time. A large portion of schools have gone digital: the students learn at home from a device, and in turn the teachers teach at home from a device. There are other options that could work, such as hybrid learning, a combination of in-person school and distance learning. The San Juan Unified School District has decided that distance learning would be the best course of action for now. Many students have differing opinions on the methods of learning used in a global pandemic. Some say it is easier, a large portion say it is more challenging to learn, and others are neutral about the topic. Students might be spoken for, but what do teachers have to say about it? With that question in mind, the Newsroom interviewed one of Bella Vista’s physical education instructors, Mrs. Wright, with several questions about the teaching aspect of remote learning.
How has distance learning made you change your ways of teaching? Like I said in the beginning of the year, I try to be positive about it and use the time to teach concepts and different fundamentals of fitness and exercise that maybe I wouldn’t teach or would just talk about quickly before people got moving in their regular PE class. So since I have to have that time synchronously with you then I can take advantage of that and teach some things I wouldn’t normally have time for.
Is there anything you would change about distance learning? I think it seems about right. The one thing for PE is that it’s difficult to know if people are really doing the workouts. So I try to put in certain things like putting in your heart rate, but people can fake that. It’s just kind of an honors system, I guess. I don’t know that I would do more zooms, I think the half hour required is perfect and then every once and a while we go over it a little bit. I know some people don’t really like the short Wednesday, but I actually like it. I think it’s good to - even though I don’t always see your guys’ faces - I think it’s just a good check-in, reminder, I think it helps anytime you physically have to log in and see a teacher or see somebody, I think it helps. I know some teachers, and parents, and probably kids too don’t like Wednesdays, but I think it’s better than not having it. And it’s nice to have one short day. I just don’t feel comfortable asking people to workout on camera, so I don’t really have a solution to that but I wish there was a way that I could be able to see that they were actually doing it.
Do you have any advice for students to make distance learning easier? I truly think that you should take little breaks and don’t just sit all day. Before all of this, my husband worked in an office and he wanted to stay home and do work from home because then he can get up, do some push-ups, go for a walk around the block, do some things and it’s really helped him to be able to focus on work and do this so he’s kind of been my guinea pig a little bit. So it’s not school, but I know what it’s like to sit all day in front of a computer and work, and it’s just not––you don’t feel good. So even if you feel overwhelmed, give yourself those breaks to get up and move and it will help you to deal with whatever’s overwhelming you.
What are your opinions on returning to school? I mean I want to go back so badly, but I don’t know. I don’t know when’s the right time, or if hybrid’s more of a mess and it’ll be better to stay with what we have. My niece and nephew are in elementary school but they’ll be going back next week, hybrid. My sister-in-law will be teaching in a different district, hybrid, starting next week. So I kinda want to let the other schools be the guinea pig and see how it goes and then we can still wait it out a little bit. I just think there’s so many things to consider. As much as I want to be back, I just don’t know when it’s right. On one hand I think the kids need to be back, I want to be back, I want the social aspect of being able to actually go to school, so I want to go now, but I know there’s a lot of other things to consider. And keeping all of the workers on campus safe, and the students and then all of the people who say the kids don’t really get that sick, well I don’t want anyone to get sick. But then you go home to your families and I go home to my family and you know. So I don’t want us to rush it and then have us go back to completely everything shut down. That’s my strategy, wait and see how it goes. See what the other schools are doing first and then we’ll see. But yeah I don’t know about the hybrid version either, I think that’s what we’ll do first but that seems very confusing for everybody too. And hard for the people to get their kids to school for part of the day and not for others. For older kids maybe not as much but still, you know, not everybody drives or can drive themselves so I know then for parents that are having to be at work that is a crazy schedule and things to ask to do so I kind of feel like we’re starting to get in a groove with this although it’s not the most ideal thing. So we’ll just stay with this for a bit.