Adjusting has been far too common for staff this school year, especially during online hours. During these times, it’s important to empathize with our teachers as they are going through many hardships just to teach.

I had a talk with Social Studies teacher Mrs. Humphries as we had a conversation on how she’s dealing with teaching her students online.

Q: Are you liking the new schedule?

A: I appreciate having more time to work with students. This is helpful for me to spend more time going over information and skills that take more time. However, I know that it is hard for students to stay focused for the entire day. By the time I teach my 4B class, the students have expressed that they are tired or have trouble focusing.

Q: How do you deal with tech issues in class?

A: I try to plan for technology issues as much as possible before class starts. I will make sure I can share my screen and let students into the meeting before I start class. Inevitably, students have technology issues during class. Students usually message me privately on Teams to tell me about their technology issue and I will offer whatever solution I can think of. Sometimes these are simple solutions like exiting and entering class, restarting Teams, or logging into the correct Gmail account. Other times, I will have to be more creative about my solutions and hope that my WiFi can handle the many tasks I need to complete in a class.

Q: How do you connect with students virtually?

A: My Do Now questions to start class on Remote Mondays are about making connections among students. These include: favorite fast food restaurant, something good that happened this week, milk or cereal first. I appreciate having the time to get to know my students in this way, something that is often lost when we are only in person.

Q: What kind of arguments do you have for the new remote schedule?

A: I think that seeing students throughout the week is beneficial because it reminds them that they are supposed to be doing schoolwork on their at-home days, and they are not on an extended weekend during their at-home days. I also think that the longer Monday schedule is beneficial because it gives more “face time” between teachers and students and can be used to go over new information more in depth.

Q: What challenges have you faced during Remote Mondays?

A: The biggest challenge is keeping students alert for the entire day, especially towards the end of the day. Students are tired at the end of a long day and, understandably, struggle to stay focused on the longer days. I also lost some of my planning time on remote Mondays, which is a trade off that had to be made to give more face time with students. This means that I spend more time at home or after school planning and grading to be prepared for the coming weeks.

Q: Do you think we should continue this Remote Monday schedule?

A: I believe we should continue this remote schedule because the benefits outweigh the costs in my opinion.