Oklahoma School Reopening Requires Teachers to Be Creative with Their Precautions

With the reopening of Oklahoma schools, teachers are doing their best to create preventive measures in their classrooms. Dibble, Oklahoma third grade teacher Ms. McDaniel was inspired by online plans for creating class dividers out of PVC pipe and transparent shower curtains. The dividers allow the students to interact with one another, see the classroom board, and see the teacher without being able to breathe directing on other students. Oklahoma schools have not instituted a regulation for masks or other protective measures and only have offered recommendations. This has left individual school districts to provide their own rules. In this particular school some students wear mask, some do not, and others have opted for virtual learning. These desk dividers become a way for teachers to have structural PPE where individual PPE may not exist. Ms. McDaniel made five large cross section dividers that can protect up to twenty children. Ms. McDaniel researched, purchased, and fabricated all of these on her own. Her ingenuity is an example of how rural schools and rural teachers have had to be more creative with their methods of precaution.

Submitted for the #ruralvoices collection. Contributed by Clinton P. Roberts, curatorial intern for Arizona State University, HST 580.

* #ruralvoices, Oklahoma, school, reopening, PPE, dividers, mask, elementary, education, #covidteaches

August 9, 2020

Clinton P. Roberts

Kelly McDaniel

Clinton P. Roberts

HST580

Arizona State University

Text Story

English Rural

English Education--K12

English Government State

English Art & Design

English Social Distance

teacher

Oklahoma

school

reopening

PPE

#K12

#ruralvoices

dividers

elementary

education

mask

English Rural Voices

English K-12

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