Items
topic_interest is exactly
education
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2020-09-18
Jewish Melbourne: Mt Scopus students celebrate Rosh Hashanah online
This is a photo album of screenshots of students celebrating Rosh Hashanah together on zoom -
2020-10-07
Jewish Melbourne: Mt Scopus primary students virtual Sukkot
"Our Primary Students have also been learning about Chag #Sukkot From a virtual Sukkah to LEGO demonstrations, this year’s #Sukkot5781 has certainly had a point of difference! #JewishIdentity #Gettingthroughthistogether" -
2020-09-24
Jewish Melbourne: Mt Scopus ScopusTorah@Home - Yom Kippur 5781
"What does Purim have to do with Yom Kippur? In this week’s ScopusTorah@Home Mrs Adina Bankier-Karp will explain why channeling our inner Esther is key this Yom Kippur. #JewishIdentity #Gettingthroughthistogether" -
2020-08-11
Out of Lockdown and Sadness, Joy and Hope Spring Eternal
The oldest screenshot in this collection is from July of 2019, when my initial inquiry into attendance at St. Mary's University began. I was initially disappointed because I am located in Houston, St. Mary's is obviously in San Antonio, and they did not, at the time, offer online degree plans. In August I received an e-mail about the Public History scholarship program, which also announced the university's plan to have remote learning programs for this Master's program. I was ecstatic; I applied, and was accepted just in time for the semester to start. I received an informal acceptance in an e-mail from the program director, Dr. Wieck, and then a more formal one from the Interim Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. These screen shots mean a lot to me, as I was very interested in St. Mary's as the college for my Master's, even though it wasn't ideal location wise, it seemed like one of the more thorough and dedicated programs in Texas. I was disappointed at first when I first was told I there weren't online classes, and didn't think much about that specific program for a bit afterwards. With the craziness of the pandemic sweeping over the country, I decided what the heck, picked up a GRE study book and began the process of studying, to apply to a closer university when I got the e-mail about the scholarship and remote learning classes. Being able to "attend" my preferred school has been a welcome surprise amidst constant weeks and months of bad news, stress, and anxiety. It has been a wild ride, given the short time between my application and admittance, when I wasn't sure I'd be admitted to the program in the first place. However, I'm rather pleased to be going pursuing this dream, and trying to learn from my mistakes daily. -
2020-09-20
Jewish Melbourne: Mt Scopus Rosh HaShana 5781 Greeting from Rabbi Kennard
"Rabbi Kennard passed on his Rosh HaShana greetings to staff, students and the whole #ScopusFamily at the conclusion of the virtual Student Leadership Induction Ceremony on Tuesday 15 September, 2020." -
2020-09-16
Jewish Melbourne: Mt Scopus Principal's End of Term 3 message
"Despite our community’s difficult circumstances Principal Rabbi Kennard is still able to provide an end of term message detailing Mount Scopus Memorial College Highlights for Term 3, 2020." -
11/16/2020
Anonymous Teacher Oral History, 2020/11/16
I've chosen to submit this interview, because it captures the raw and real experience of an (almost) brand new teacher. Someone who has recently graduated (May, 2019) and barely dipped their toes into the teaching world. She has had to adapt to not only teaching a subject different than the one she studied for in college, but also navigating the trials of teaching in a pandemic world. This 40 minute long interview that show cases the emotions and trials that a teacher has to experience. On top of issues like student engagement, and teaching unfamiliar material she has to ensure that she's accounting for all her students attending, both the ones physically and online, while juggling asynchronous and synchronous classes. One particular poignant quote "It's not that I'm trying to relax and be happy or anything. It's just trying to find downtime to just have energy" really sums up the energy of how the year has gone for this new teacher. This perspective is important, as it shows the reality of how strenuous the pandemic education scene has been for educators, and the problems it's creating for students, as this person discusses. The pitfalls of technology that are harming rather than helping, and causing issues that might reverberate in the futures of the student's academic careers. -
2020-11-06
Fang Squad Tee
This is a picture of me in Charles Francis Hall at St. Mary's University, where I'm a student. One of the things which is happening here is the Fang Squad, which encourages social distancing and the wearing of masks. I'm modeling the teeshirt I was lucky enough to get. It's important to me because both myself and people I care about are members of the higher risk group. -
2020-11-12
NYC Schools May Shut Down
The school system, the nation’s largest, has had strikingly few coronavirus cases. Even so, the mayor may end in-person classes because the city’s overall rate is surging. -
2020-07-15
Travel in the Age of Covid-19
If you would like to know why I was travelling, please see this journal: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/item/30217 Travelling at the best of times can induce stress and anxiety. In the times of Covid-19, it is a whole different experience. I am dropped off at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport. The departure screen, usually filled with flight information, now only has a handful of flights on display. Incoming flights into Melbourne have been suspended entirely. My destination is Bahrain via Dubai International Airport. Emirates Airlines EK409 is flying at about a third of its capacity (the Melbourne-Dubai route is, at normal times, a very popular one and flights are usually almost full). The extra room is welcome, allowing many travellers to lay down and enjoy a little comfort in these uncomfortable times. Masks as well as gloves are required throughout the flight. A hygiene kit is provided. I sleep for most of the flight. When I arrive in Dubai, sitting in the terminal building waiting for my connection (which is in 10 hours because of reduced flights frequency), and as a way of passing the time, I join one of my online University classes. Three months later, in October 2020, when this journal was written, travel is still a very complicated affair. This is the worst crisis to hit the industry since the attacks of September the 11th 2001. I will not take travel for granted ever again. This reflection was submitted as part of the HIST30060 Making History project at the University of Melbourne. -
2020-09-27
How Corona Affected Me
Over 60% of Nevada's revenue comes from Gaming Taxes and Sales Taxes so when everything was shutdown because of the virus our revenue became unstable so large budget cuts were made to education as well as other areas. The education cuts are what concern me the most; not only am I directly affected but so is my community. Nevada is 45th in the U.S. for education so it shows that we will only be going down from that point. Those large breaks in education are significantly impactful for younger children whose brains are still developing. -
10/28/2020
Mona Lopez Oral History, 2020/10/28
This is an oral history interview conducted with narrator Professor Mona Lopez of St. Mary's University by interviewer Christopher Hohman on October 28, 2020. The narrator discusses the challenges and benefits of online teaching and how the COVID19 pandemic necessitated changes in her teaching style. -
2020
Jewish Melbourne: Bialik College Foundation fundraising projects for Covid-19
Amongst its other fundraising efforts, Bialik College launched a special 'Covid-19 Relief' fundraiser: "Our goal is to ensure no child leaves Bialik College as a result of financial hardship caused by COVID-19. Help us make this a reality and support a family in need. We are all in this together." They also launched a fundraiser to create new outdoor spaces: "Help us transform our outdoor amphitheatre into a flexible event space. With current social distancing measures in place as a result of COVID-19, we need to think creatively to look for alternative ways to gather as a school community." -
2020-11-05
“Once the World Stopped” - Final Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLg4GmKELd4&feature=emb_title Theater students and faculty at the University of North Dakota (UND) were left with a semester’s worth of classes to fill when the performing arts department was closed down due to COVID-19 restrictions. The students and faculty decided to put a play into production that “follows a group of high school students 30 years into the future learning about the many events of 2020. Mr. Silverside, the class substitute, takes the class on a journey to the past through his experiences, stories and interactive assignments.” “UND student and actress/writing team member Erin Chaves said the goal was to create a piece that would be relatable to multiple audiences and that also carried a strong message. When meetings about the production got started this fall, students spoke about their experiences from the summer, whether that included learning a new recipe or watching a new show or dealing with more serious topics, such as the Black Lives Matter movement or losing a job.” -
2020-03-27
Class of 2020
Holding a piece of toilet paper, everything within this picture symbolizes what has occurred in 2020, particularly to the graduating class. -
2020-04-07
Robot Graduation
A new reality for some graduates is a graduation prompted by limited people and digital technology. -
2020-03-25
Online Museum
This is one of the unique ways that Museums are engaging with at distance learning, integrating VR technology. -
2020-03-13
Their School is Open, But the Kids Are Staying Home
This story talks about the proclivity for families to stay home even as schools begin gearing up to have classes transition back into the classroom, out of fear for COVID. -
2020-09-04
Learning to be a Writing Center Tutor in 2020
I chose to upload my research proposal because I am going to study how tutoring strategies work in an online setting. I would usually have more flexibility with this assignment if we were meeting in-person with out students, but I had to restrict my options to those that were easily conducted in an online setting. I thought it's important to note how the physical conducting of school is not only affected by out situation, but also the actual content of classes too. Most of my classes are working the pandemic into their lesson plans in one way or another. In my Media History class, we looked at artifacts from the Spanish flu in newspapers from 1918-1919 to understand how the flu affected their lives then. -
11/04/2020
David Oral History, 2020/11/04
This is an interview with an instructor who had to adapt to teaching online from live demonstration. He also has health challenges. It's important to me because the health of all of us is important in the pandemic. Especially those in the high risk group like myself. Written transcript. It is an interview conducted with a professor at a local college. -
2020-04-29
"Reasons I Can't Do My Homework"
This digital comic demonstrates the anxiety and fears that arose during the pandemic around April of 2020. The artists shows how they are being overwhelmed by the fears for their own life and the lives of their loved ones because you can clearly see “mom” and “grandma” in the fears scrolling through their brain. Because of these fears there is no room for “school work” and “classes”. -
2020-11-02
IMAG History & Science Center COVID-19 Changes
Fort Myers IMAG History & Science Center new hours and exhibit closure web page for COVID-19. There are new hours, groups must register at least a week in advance, and there are exhibits that are remaining closed until further notice. -
2020-09-09
Jewish Melbourne: Melton Spring Program email
With the pandemic lockdown, Melton School moved to online classes for its adult education program -
2020-10-26
Inside an In-Person Virtual classroom
These are six photographs I took of objects in my education classroom at St. Mary's University-San Antonio. My education course is the only course that I am taking in person. The classroom environment is very different from that of a pre-pandemic classroom. The biggest differences are the number of students present in the classroom and the seating layout. I am one of two, sometimes three, students who attend the class in person. We are only allowed to sit in socially distanced seats marked by a brown paper rectangle; all other seats are required to be empty. Most of the cleaning takes place both before and after students arrive and leave class. My professor uses the disinfectant spray and wipes pictured here to clean the tables. Included also in these photographs are the instructions for using the disinfectant in both English and Spanish. -
2020-07-31
School Re-opening Video from Now This News
This video is from Now This News and uses footage from the School District of Manatee County in Florida. The footage was for promotional material the school district released in July 20202 for what it would look like in August to have their schools be re-opened. The video mentions the controversy between parents and schools and professionals that want to wait for in-person teaching to resume. -
2020-10-30
Teaching Today
This is a photo of my friend, Lindsay. She is a high school teacher here in Colorado. We live in a small town that was fortunate enough to not feel the panic of the pandemic until well-after other places had. She misses her students, and there are real concerns for the mental health of not only the kids, but the teachers too. -
2020-08-26
Teaching During a Pandemic
This Times article follows a few different teachers to get their take on what teaching during the pandemic has looked like for them. With every state having different rules and regulations, each teacher has their own experience of what the new school year is bringing and what teachers are doing to cope. -
2020-10-23
9 Year Old Boy Walks To School For Wifi
A 9 year old boy has to walk to school to use the wifi to attend his online classes. -
2020-06-26
Never Been in a Real Classroom
I like this meme because when the CDC came out with initial guidelines everyone who has been in a classroom was surprised. Anyone, especially teachers and administrators, know that its next to impossible to keep students 6 feet apart and stay in one desk. The initial guidelines, and even some of the current ones, are next to unrealistic for a school environment. -
2020-07-07
Fall 2020 Course Format Options for Students at St. Mary’s University
This email was sent out to the St. Mary’s University community on July 7, 2020, to explain the three different formats in which courses would be offered for the Fall 2020 semester. The university would offer three different formats for the then-upcoming semester. The first format offered was online courses (OL). These courses were not taught in person, but they still follow a syllabus and have course deadlines. They could include pre-recorded lectures, video uploads, class chats, and individual meetings with professors. The next course format offered was Virtual (V). These courses would meet at an appointed time and date, similar to a normal in-person class, but on the Zoom conference platform, and they would be led by a professor who could be teaching from a variety of different environments. They would not meet in person or on campus, just virtually. Similar to online courses these courses might also include class chats, video recordings, and one on one meetings with professors. The last course format offered was In-Person Virtual (IPV). These courses were designed as hybrid courses. Students would be able to attend these courses in person in a traditional classroom environment (though class size would be limited), or they could attend the class virtually through Zoom. All of the course formats described above were offered by my university in response to the COVID19 pandemic, and they demonstrate the need for adaptation and change in the era of COVID19. The author of this post has been able to attend both virtual and in-person virtual classes at St. Mary’s University this semester. Speaking from firsthand experience, I can attest to how different being in the classroom is this semester. There are not a lot of students in the class; at most maybe three students on any given day. Those of us in the classroom, students, and teachers, sit in socially distanced seats, and we all have our masks up. Regardless, I am grateful that I have had the chance to try to forge a new normal for myself during such an abnormal time for our university and our world. -
2020-07-09
Covid-19, Education and Making Choices
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced almost everyone to make decisions, some small and some drastic. The following is a reflection of how my studies as an international student at the University of Melbourne, Australia were affected by the pandemic. The date is 9 July 2020. Covid-19 cases have been on the rise in Melbourne in the past two weeks. This trend seems specific to Melbourne as the rest of Australia seems to have the situation under control. I receive an email from the University. The email announces that the studies for the second semester (July to November 2020) will take place entirely online. The majority of semester 1 (March to June) had also taken place online. But students were hopeful that a return to face-to-face teaching would be possible given the relatively low number of cases of Australia up to late June 2020 (when the second wave started). As an international student, I must make a choice. To stay in Melbourne or to fly home. I need to do so quickly, since incoming flights to Melbourne had already been suspended, and there is no guarantee that the same might not happen to outgoing flight. In my case, returning home seemed the obvious choice. I would rather have stayed in Melbourne (a city I love!), but alas at least to return means to be closer to friends and family during these times. I write this in October 2020, the semester is almost over, and the number of daily cases in Melbourne has now dropped significantly (to single digits), after months of strict measures. For much of the rest of the world however, there does not seem to be an end in sight. Submitted as part of the HIST30060 Making History subject at the University of Melbourne. -
2020-10-16
Pre-Pandemic, what did we know? Teachers knew nothing.
March 12th, 2020 seemed to be a perfect spring day in Southeast Georgia, it was a beautiful morning. I am a teachers assistant in a self-contained classroom in Liberty Co., GA. We had a long weekend ahead of us, March 12th was a Thursday and we had Friday off, 5 day weekend, and all of the kids knew it! So as any teacher would do we had a relaxed day. We taught normal morning lessons, talked to the kids about why they will not see us on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, or St. Patricks day that was coming up. So, we painted pictures of rainbows - nothing out of the ordinary, at least not in our little self-contained bubble. The teachers for some time had been hearing about this virus, and that it was far worse than the severe flu we saw in 2018, or anything else we have seen from overseas. This illness was something that we all were closely monitoring in the news because schools are the perfect breeding grounds for germs of any illnesses; however, we knew one thing - that there were some measures being put in place for travel. Then we get an all-call on the intercom in our classroom, "Hey 201, we just want to inform yall the main water line is broken up the road. We suggest you call your parents to get ready to receive their children, its a half-day." STUNNED we all took a moment, took a breath. Our 7 kids had no idea what was happening so we all took to our phones and called the parents of the most vulnerable first, then the ones we knew may take some time to get a hold of. Next we informed our parents of the children who ride buses that they will be on their way home within the next hour as the school had no water. We rallied up our kids, went through our daily clean up (4 hours earlier than usual) and gave them all tight hugs. Some of them didn't want to leave, some really didn't understand why they were going home so early, and some just wanted to get out of the crowd. In the end, I hugged every last one of my kids I took up to the front office because I had a sick feeling about this weekend. I told them to be good and listen to their adults and I waved goodbye. For most, that was the last time I saw that set of kids again because last year's class was older. Those children went onto middle school. Friday, March 13th, 2020 came and rumors started that we may not be going back to school on Wednesday because of some virus called Coronavirus. What was this? Why? No one understood. My teacher friends were all communicating online what was happening, a lot of uncertainty. The weekend came and went, nothing. Monday, the 16th of March, we got the news we weren't to enter ANY school building, this virus is highly contagious. I'd seen the news and by then China, Japan, Korea, and Italy were on total lockdown, Spain was following suit; along with the rest of the world, the US was the only nation in the world not really doing anything. However, in Liberty co. we were on lockdown, schools shutdown. At some point we were told only lead teachers and 2 assistants per grade level may go into the school to help get the children's personal belongings, this did not happen. Everything was shutdown, it was too dangerous. Personally, I didn't hear from the majority of my students after March 12th. Many factors are at play here: little to no technology in low-income homes, parents decided that since school was out they weren't obligated to stay in the area so they went to visit family in different Counties/States (so no communication was made) or parents didn't pick up the phones when we would call, those that we did see online wasn't for long because our teaching method is very hands on for Special Education our parents had no idea how to help at home and some gave in a put YouTube videos on all day. This wasnt easy for ANYONE I know. Pandemics, changes in general, and a sudden life change is ALWAYS hard. School as we know it will never be the same. As of today, this new school year we are doing hybrid teaching, which is giving parents the option to send their child to school face-to-face learning (with a mask on at all times) or they can have virtual learning. Our county provided everyone child and staff with ipads, so there's really no excuse at this point. I'm optimistic for the future, I feel a change in teaching. It's hard to change a system that is so engrained in our systems but we can figure it out. -
2020-10-16
Worrying for future scholarships
I'm worried about applying for a future scholarship called the MEXT scholarship because supposedly international students are still not allowed to enter Japan. While this will likely change, I'm fearful that due to many governments around the world losing tax revenue due to the pandemic, that they'll will cut extraneous programs such as the MEXT scholarship. The pandemic prevented people taking the JLPT language assessment last July as well. That makes it harder to get certifications to help boost my current resume. They say that there will be a test date in December, but like many events during the pandemic, it's up in the air. -
2020-10-01
TD3 20-21 School Plan
I chose a PDF file detailing Tempe Elementary School District’s (TD3) plan for the 2020-2021 school year. This details when and why the school district is pushing back in person start dates and what they are doing to help the students/staff during the pandemic. It’s important to me because this is the school district I work for so it has an affect on what I do. -
2020-09-28
Dealing with Covid-19 and School
Last semester (spring 2020) was only my second semester in college and as I was already struggling to get a grasp on my school work and manage a social life outside of school and my part time job I had found myself back at home in my childhood bedroom having to teach myself the material. I am now a sophomore at Florida Gulf Coast University. This semester I have only one class in person and we just meet to complete the labs therefore I am basically teaching myself five college level courses. I also have a part time job at PetSmart and as they are pretty flexible since I am in school it is still hard to fully manage my free time to the best of my abilities without wasting any of the time I do have outside of work. I, like probably many others have found the past few months some of the most challenging yet evolving times of my life. Despite the challenges I've encountered over the last 6 months I was very thrilled to be back at home with my parents and my cat that I was very upset to leave to begin with. But, I shouldn’t have been home that long. Us, the students of America, need to be in classrooms learning hands on, we need that time out of the house to prospere, we need those social interactions with teachers and peers. We should not be forced to take classes via a computer. This is America we should have the right to decide whether we want to return to our lives normally, as we should and be in the classroom learning with our teachers in front of us. As we are now in week seven of the fall semester for students in higher level education across America there have been numerous instances of universities closing due to Covid-19 outbreaks and some not even opening back up to give the students a chance. My university has opened with the majority of the classes still being online which has been challenging. Most of the resources they provide to us have either been moved to online formatting or just simply closed which is unfair. Why should we the students who want to succeed in our lives ahead of us be stuck behind computer screens teaching ourselves the material for our coursework? America should be able to handle this pandemic a lot better than it has been to get our students back in the classrooms. -
2020-09-23
The Challenges of Caring for Children and Working at Home
I have been working from home and caring for both of my kids with my spouse since March. It is challenging and chaotic, but also it brings a lot of joys in watching kids develop. Teaching at the university level has also brought its challenges and joys, but I hope that by making my own struggles visible, it makes me more relatable to students. -
09/19/2020
Alice Oral History, 2020/09/19
This is an interview of a college freshman detailing the effects COVID-19 has had on both the end of their senior of high school and the start of college. It focuses on education and more generally the response of national, local and educational institutions to COVID-19. -
2020-03-20
The Real Pandemic: How America Believed the Coronavirus Proved the Existence of Educational Inequity
I am submitting an auto-ethnography on my experience as a college student in the CUNY educational system during the transition to online learning and the pandemic. -
2020-08
The Real Pandemic: How America Believed The Coronavirus Proved the Existence of Educational Inequity
Several articles seek to expand the conversation of educational inequity during the pandemic in New York City public schools, however many exclude key aspects of inequality that predate the pandemic. This narrative acknowledges and challenges notions that use the pandemic to explain the inequality. It is not only my personal experience throughout the pandemic, but also the experiences around public education of me, my students, and co-workers. Amplifying the necessity for leadership, mental health, and technology to combat the concerns of racial and class retraumatization, the aspiration and achievement gap, and other aspects of inequity. In this analysis, we transform ideas about inequality in relation to [rather than caused by] the pandemic and challenge readers to think about solutions in a different way. -
2020-09-13
“Quack conjurers” and Snake Oil: Drawing Parallels Between Defoe’s Plague Year and Public Exploitation During The Age of COVID-19.
This story is a short essay for my graduate literature course, analyzing parallels between Daniel Defoe’s Plague Year and our current experiences in the pandemic of COVID-19. It is important to me because I believe these parallels illustrate the importance of putting our faith in reliable information, and learning from the mistakes of the past rather than repeating them. -
2020-09-10T07:30
New Jersey School Bus Stop, September 2020
My 11 year old was not interested in doing a first day of school photo like we've done in the past. I get that it's embarrassing since "nobody else's parents walk around with big cameras." But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to preserve the moment for posterity, so I snuck a picture with my phone and cropped it afterward. I think the photo says a lot about the moment without words- the American flag, the masks, and the way the two girls are talking to each other while staying at least six feet apart. The flag represents, to me, the event that broke the idea of American exceptionalism for Americans in denial. Despite my prediction that Trump would screw up the response to the virus back in March, I was sure we'd be back to normal by the fall. I thought someone would get Trump to do the right thing. All I can say is I'm glad to live in one of the few states with strict rules that have brought our March and April infection rates low enough to have safe, hybrid, public education. -
2020-08-30
Virtual labs feel like a bad video game
I'm currently adjusting to virtual lab for an upper-division physiology course, and my class is using a program called Labster for simulations. Picture a 2010's era, first-person video game where you are walked through 'levels' of the lab by a floating robot overlord called Dr. One. You get to put on a virtual lab coat, use a virtual iPad, and interact with virtual lab equipment. I've done experiments on computerized lab-rats, teleported into mitochondria, and clicked my way through the Krebs cycle. It feels very dystopian and unsettling, and would be funny if I wasn't being charged full tuition for what boils down to a Portal-2 knock-off without the cool aliens. Sometimes it's nice not having to commute to school. But mostly, I miss real lab and the feeling that I'm learning something meaningful by being in class. -
2020-08-30
Deaf students at an Arizona school will go virtual, but not without obstacles
By Katelyn Keenehan/Luce Foundation: Southwest Stories Fellowship -
2020-08-20
Transitions During a Still World: My Time as a TA
The world stopped. Everything about our daily lives that we loved (even the things we hated) became abnormal. After being sent home abruptly from my study abroad experience, I was aching for something academically stimulating to do with my summer. Internships were cancelled, and the world only seemed to be doing their daily doses of reading through social media. The position to become a Teaching Assistant for a newly created Politics of the Pandemic course fell into my lap. This blessing of a position gave me the chance to not only help a professor teach the national and global problems that COVID-19 brought into the world, but gave me the chance to truly influence the newest class of Suffolk Rams. A year ago, becoming a TA had given me a true, tangible connection to Suffolk, and this summer I got to aid 38 students in finding their own reasons to love the school. Even during a pandemic, when the world seems still, transitions are happening. I consider myself lucky to be a part of so many individual lives and transitions. -
2020-08-09
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. -
08/04/2020
Lee Foster Oral History, 2020/08/04
Oral History in which Lee Foster discusses how one teaches shop (Industrial Arts) through online learning, what it is like teaching your students at the same time as your own children, and having a spouse working in a hospital during the pandemic. He also discusses the changes, or lack thereof, in family dynamics during a pandemic all with his easy-going positivity and sense of gratitude for his situation. -
2020-07-26
Pandemic Pods? The Return of Schooling in America
This pandemic has opened the eyes of millions of Americans, including mine, when it came to questioning the necessity of a traditional schooling system. The bridge between political parties reflects various differing opinions on what parents feel the best way to re-enroll back their kids into school. The article I found interested me as it mentioned that families are looking into the idea of creating small groups with local children called “pods” which would help [pay for private tutors or teachers. However this method may require paying thousands of dollars in order to fund tutors to teach these localized groups of students. It is still unsafe in many institutions which thousands of children pass by one another on a daily basis which could lead to mass spread of the virus if even a couple of students have contracted the virus. This article reflects the outcome of an already declining school system affected with a worldwide pandemic. This article gives us a way of looking at how people are affected by and making alternatives to a failing and problematic system of education due to current health safety requirements. This post makes me question whether to innovate or destroy the system? Everything seems to be fluid and unpredictable due to the varying status of the nation day to day. Makes me question, who is responsible for the safety of students and children to be upheld? How does one monitor the level of safety and how will well being be ensured? -
07/27/2020
Jason Zackowski Oral History, 2020/07/27
Jason Zackowski describes what science education has been like during a global pandemic both in schools and on the internet. He discusses the transition to online learning in schools as he is head of the science department and a teacher at a high school in Red Deer, Alberta. He also shares his concerns for the planned return to school. Jason runs a science podcast as well as a popular twitter account for his dog "Bunsen Berner" which he uses to share scientific facts, research, and methods in a fun way. As such he discusses the "blowback" by members of the public on social media to scientists when it shares information regarding the virus and pandemic. -
2020-07-13
Reopening presents additional challenges for Northern Ontario schools
"In one school, she said, there’s one full-time teacher, a part-time teacher and an education assistant. There’s no administrator, which raises a new host of problems during a pandemic. “'When there’s no administrator on site, and a kid gets sick, what do you do?' Douglas said. 'Who’s gonna be responsible for that child?' "But the barriers to remote learning are also greater up north, she said. “'A lot of us don’t have Wi-Fi abilities at our homes,' Douglas said. 'We pay an exorbitant amount of money to get Wi-Fi. And for us to do online learning, it’s been a challenge for many members. I’ve had members who have paid upwards of $700 for their Wi-Fi, just to do the distance learning.'” -
2020-06-08
State superintendent Tony Thurmond releases guidance for reopening California schools
As an educator in California I am eager to know what the final word on reopening will be. These are scary times, especially for educators over 65 or those of us who have pre-existing conditions.