AP Computer teacher Alice Fisher responds to emails from parents, students and administrators during seventh period in Room 1618. She receives a lot of emails per week and admits it takes up her time but she always gets them done.

Teachers adopt new approaches to instruction following virtual school

Jessica Gil, Reporter

Oct 11, 2021

Teaching is not always about content but more about developing friendships with the students.

The pandemic shut down everything including schools in March 2019. As a result, students and teachers met in virtual classrooms on Microsoft Teams.

In Room 2609, Anatomy teacher Abigail DeCerbo explains the anatomical positions during the second block of lunch to a student who missed class. DeCerbo shows a diagram about the human body and gives worksheets explaining the functions. (Photo by Jessica Gil)

Anatomy teacher Abigail Decerbo teaches in room 2609, in what is now the old science wing, and said that teaching in-person is so much better than virtual teaching.

“Teaching virtually was a challenge, since I couldn’t get to know my students,” DeCerbo said. “Having them in front of me now really helps to appreciate in-person school. Since it’s much easier to get to know them this way, even though they had their little profile pictures and things like that, it is not a way to get to know a student, as a person and their personality, unless they’re in front of you.”

Although some teachers found it easier to grade last year because of the advantage of softwares, such as plagiarism software, DeCerbo still prefers in-person learning over virtual learning.

“Virtual was a little bit easier as far as grading things, but I want my students to physically do things now as opposed to just being in front of the screen,” DeCerbo said. “Especially in science, because it’s just so difficult to get science across. In a virtual setting, no matter how many activities you do on the computer, nothing beats being in the classroom where students are physically looking at models, they have microscopes in front of them to touch and move.”

AP Lit English teacher Jeffrey Waller leads a class discussion during third period in Room 3715 about an AP question addressing prose analysis in a free-response essay. Prose analysis is a reading tool used to analyze a piece of text. (Photo by Jessica Gil)

AP English Literature teacher Jeffrey Waller said that the virtual setting last year was a bit easier in terms of grading.

“I’ll be honest, I never used the HUB before last year,” Waller said. “I used it as a plagiarism detector when that feature was active. I’d have my students submit their essays there.”

Despite last year being difficult for students and teachers, sometimes going out of one’s comfort zone is needed.

80% of teachers said that getting their students’ attention as well as getting their students to follow the honors code was hard during the pandemic. Teachers like Fisher now uses the same methods this year that helped her build a relationship with her students during the pandemic, from song suggestions to favorite TV-shows or movies. (Infographic by Jessica Gil and Sonya Kulkarni)

“I was kind of scared about having to adapt my curriculum to an online format,” Waller said. “Last year actually gave me the courage to make the jump to teaching AP Lit this year because I had to reinvent so much of what I ordinarily do. I thought, hey, you know, I’ve still got it in me to, to do new things, to try new things. Considering some of the stuff I did last year, I thought were pretty successful.”

For these teachers, virtual learning proved to be a challenge when they attempted to teach more interactively. It did not always perform well, mainly because students did not participate in distance learning as they were free to leave the computer and do what they pleased.

“Teaching during the pandemic was interesting,” Waller said. “I got to know so few of my students last year, which was a challenge. At least this year I have a lot of the same students from last year and I finally got to see and meet them for the first time in-person, so that is definitely one good aspect about having in-person this year.”

AP Computer Science Principles and AP Computer Science A teacher Alice Fisher said it is extremely important to get to know her students as people too.

“One thing that I think the pandemic did help me with is this idea of sharing more about who I am, virtual was harder to connect with students,” Fisher said. “So I started asking students about their favorite songs or artists as a way to get to know them better. I feel like learning is social and the pandemic helped me realize how much being social is part of learning in school.”

Fisher now implements the same interactives in her class as she did last year as a way to get to know her students, aiming to build a better connection with her students considering how last year was more of a success than what she expected.

“I’ve been teaching since 1996,” Fisher said. “When I was younger teaching was more about the content and making sure they learn. As I get older, it’s much more about supporting students on their pathway and more about the relationships that you build with students. To my younger self, I would tell her that teaching is a lot more than just instruction.”