As we all know, this year is completely different from any other school years we have had. With how chaotically school ended last year, teachers were already stressed about this upcoming year. Our school had to make a lot of changes for this school year, including how teachers prepared for this year.
Teachers already have a lot to do to get ready for each school year, but it was even more work getting ready for this school year. They also had to change some classroom strategies that they were using in previous years and make some new changes for this year. Mrs. Brunton said, “I needed to make sure that the tables in my room allowed for students to be 6 feet away from each other for COVID restrictions.”
Having to change your plan right before school starts back up would be hard for anyone, especially the teachers. They had to make changes to their rooms to make it safe for students and for the teachers themselves. Mrs.Brunton said, “The major change that I made was taking my tables from being in pods of 4 people, to individual tables of two people. I have to have kids sit at the ends of the tables to be 6 feet apart. I also had to eliminate multiple tables from my room to make enough space to be 6 feet apart.” Many other teachers had to do this same thing, like how Mr.Fry ordered new tables for his classroom, but he wasn’t able to use them this year because of covid and students having to be spread out.
This might be one of the hardest years for the teachers, but they have stayed positive and gone with the flow. Mrs. Brunton said, “This year itself has been stressful. It's hard to plan week to week or even day to day when you don't know what could happen tomorrow and we could have to suddenly teach everything virtually.” They are more stressed about making sure they have everything done, just in case we get shut down again. Everyone already felt that way at the beginning of the year, but our school is doing a great job of keeping us in school and having us be safe.