I am a high school teacher working at Angelo Rodriguez high school in Fairfield, California. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our district let out all of our students on March 13, 2020. We were off for two weeks with no school work, then came back for nine weeks of schooling using Google meet as our meeting platform.
At first, because I am a technology teacher And all of my classwork and textbooks are available online through Google Drive, I thought this was going to be a breeze. So I don’t have a large commute, commuting from my bedroom to my downstairs office seemed so much better than the 26 mile drive from Dixon to Fairfield. I figured I would miss my students, and definitely miss my coworkers, but I seriously underestimated The extent to which I would actually miss them. As it turns out, I was far from alone in that sentiment, and it didn’t even occur to me how much difficulty would be incurred by my students just trying to get online, dealing with their siblings who are also in school, or just not having access to technology.
My district took a do no harm attitude towards our students grading which, while I understand to be more than fair considering the circumstances, encouraged those students who could do the workTo not do any work at all. Furthermore, by the end of the first week of distance-learning, I had less than four students per class coming to my google meats. Wow many students did their work, a vast majority did not and they’re learning suffered greatly.
I am very hopeful that school will start in August as normal, but the current surge in cases and hospitalizations in the state, and in Solano County, are leading me to believe that this will not be the case. I remain hopeful, but I also remain realistic.
Submitted by Mike Sagan, Solan County – Dixon.