(Since I retired at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, I asked a current teacher, Justin Sumner, to write a guest blog on his reflection of the teaching during the past school year. --- Jeff Burns)
Born and raised in Georgia, Mr. Sumner graduated high school in 2010 from Mary Persons High, earned his B.A. in history from Gordon State College then proceeded to earn a Master’s in Education from Georgia Southern and a Specialist in Education from West Georgia. He began teaching at Ola High in McDonough Georgia immediately after graduating from Gordon in January 2015 and has since taught a wide array of Social Studies courses. These include: Geography, World History, Psychology, Sociology, US History, and AP US History. He is the head girls’ basketball coach and helps out with volleyball.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought changes, both negative and positive to the world of education. For me, I have always thrived at creating lasting relationships with my students that allow me to have a keen sense of their thought processes, emotions, strengths and weaknesses academically, and ultimately help make them comfortable during the time they are in my classroom. This allows me to identify ways to best help each student succeed. My first day of school tradition is to quickly introduce myself, go over any paperwork required, and then sit down and observe. I want to see how each student acts in their free time. Do they go talk to another student, get out a book, play on their cellphone, put their head down, etc. This is just one part of the process of getting to know my students. This year, I sat in front of a computer screen with 30% of my students being nothing more than the letter of their first name as an icon and the ones that turned their cameras on facing a world of technical difficulties, an unwillingness to turn their microphones on, and some obviously not paying attention. I was unable to make the connections that I wanted to make. Even upon transitioning to a hybrid model with 5-10 students in person and the rest online, it was near impossible to get to know the students. Masks covered their faces, more students refused to turn their cameras on, and participation rates began to decline.
Students quickly caught on that there was not much we could do as teachers to force them to participate. There were no harsh consequences for when they refused to do their work. Deadlines turned into “I’d like to have it by” and assessments turned into group projects. On test days, half of my in-person learners would choose to stay home and the average score for at-home learners were typically much higher than in-person. Students who struggled on the first few tests or had not completed the work would magically make high A’s and perfect scores while at home assessing. There was little we could do to prevent this. Keep in mind, this was an issue with grade level, honors, and Advanced Placement students. Every teacher seemingly had similar issues.
It seems like the term “overwhelmed” was the most used term of the year, but I could see that many students and teachers were.. The pandemic allowed for teachers to experiment with content delivery methods, some proving to be more successful than others. Teaching a subject, APUSH (Advanced Placement US history), for the first time this year, I experimented quite a bit in the beginning. Ultimately, upon discussions with the students and examining the results of their assessments, I concluded what I have long believed: students want to simply be told what they need to know. They were being assigned work, by myself and other teachers, that seemed to me to be busy work. The type of work that checks a box to say that the students have been given something. It served no real purpose. As such, I aimed to streamline my work to be as concise as possible in an attempt to prevent a feeling of being overwhelmed. I examined the standards and objectives of my courses and taught just that. I then created my assessments to match the Georgia Milestone and APUSH exams to the best of my ability and used those to gauge how well my students were understanding the content and to prepare them for those exams in May. I believe this idea of keeping the content and skills taught as concise and focused as possible will go a long way in future years to prevent both student and teacher burnout.
Ultimately, the pandemic created a dreadful year for many. I love teaching, it’s truly a passion of mine. I am an introvert but interacting with my students brings me joy, and COVID made that very difficult to do. I was also raised to have a great work ethic and it is disheartening to see students simply refuse to do what they are asked to do. I worry how apathetic they will be next year when returning in-person full time. It’s not uncommon to have a small handful of students who refuse to attend class or complete their work, but will we see a large portion of the students be this way now? Finally, while the pandemic was truly difficult for many people, have we conditioned ourselves and students to feel overwhelmed at any sign of difficulty? Students need to be encouraged that they are capable of conquering obstacles, but we as teachers need to work to make sure those obstacles are true learning experiences and not unnecessary bumps in the road. I look forward to a different and better year next year.
