Classrooms Online: The Experience of Two Teachers
By: Kasey Limón
Pennie Perkins, a science teacher at Rancho Milpitas Middle School states:
“I really like teaching 7th grade. I found my niche, but during a pandemic, it's like teaching in quicksand.”
Passionate and high-energy in her approach, Ms. Perkins is accustomed to hands-on teaching. She still has original copies of assignments dating back to the late ‘90s, so going digital was no simple feat. Last July, Perkins and three of her colleagues initiated a weekly group meeting. Thanks to their mutual support she says they have found platforms to use so that their students may have a chance to thrive.
Perkins says,
“[With] all the teaching tool platforms, it is really the teachers that went out there and try different things, and they will ask [other teachers], ‘hey, do you want to try this?’ [The tools] we are using [are] Edpuzzle, Kahoot, Discovery, and a whole array of sites to engage students and deliver content. One platform, Gizmos, has simulations of some of the fun labs that I used to do in class. The students really like it because it’s more aligned with the games that they play.”
Perkins says she doesn’t know what she would do without the support of other teachers. She says,
“So much planning and time spent making lessons digital, I can’t imagine if I had to do it by myself.”
To gain insight from another perspective, I interviewed Kha Nguyen. Mr. Nguyen teaches four classes of 9th grade english and a 12th grade AP literature class at The Stern Math and Science School in Los Angeles.
The charter school is a collaboration between The Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools and Cal State L.A. The school, which only has a 200-student capacity, receives about 500 applications. Those enrolled won through a lottery.
About half of the freshmen class has Mr. Nguyen as their teacher, though the only students this year that he has met in person are his returning seniors. While his students miss their friends and school events, about half of them like online learning, especially introverts.
At his school, the district provided general material for the online conversion, but he prefers to teach his own way.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I help other teachers. I have my own system, just now I use Google-Classroom and Zoom.”
Like many schools, Stern MASS will convert to hybrid instruction when students transition back into class. When asked about hybrid conversion, Mr. Nguyen says,
“It’s one of the concerns that teachers have because who do you focus on? I think they're gonna try to build some kind of hybrid system. It's probably best to start with hybrid first, you can focus on certain things online while the students in person are working. It hasn't worked well for a lot of teachers, so, I don't know how they're gonna address that issue.”
There are as many methods to teach as there are learning styles. The classroom setting, though it has taken different forms recently, remains the same at its core. The heart of any classroom is the teacher leading it. If teachers want to teach, students will want to learn, any obstacles can be overcome.