Teachers, too, have learned with challenges this year

MT. PLEASANT - With continuous learning in the spring and face-to-face learning in the fall education has not been easy. Expierencing a constantly changing environment since the coronavirus pandemic began surging in late March.

In the spring of 2020, the Mt. Pleasant Community School District decided that they didn't have the capability of requiring continuous learning during the novel coronavirus shutdown due to a lack of technological access and logistical problems that came with the pandemic.

They decided to move forward with optional continuous learning, with teachers K-12 required to put out two or more optional enrichment activities through online resources.

English teacher Jessi Rich was one of the many high school teachers who worked from home, providing these resource to students over the spring. Rich found that many students had other things going on, and thus didn't participate in the optional online learning aspect.

She herself having to navigate the new world of teaching from home, helping her own children with schoolwork, doing household chores and providing online learning opportunities.

'In that mindset, I understand why it would be hard for kids to focus on what they were doing. Which is why I was glad we were able to go to regular in person learning,” Rich said.

Then in the fall most students returned to the school building after a six-month break from school. With masks, attempts at social distancing, new guidance every week, students in quarenitne and isolation, and ever-evolving situations teachers had their fair share of work and stress.

Rich found it was not just teachers experiencing burnout, but students, too.

'I think the low is motivation: teachers are drained and tired, and the students are just not motivated and they're tired,” Rich said. 'A huge part of that is from being off for so long with all of the things that happened in the spring.”

On top of stressful and overwhelming face-to-face student responsibilities teachers have had to juggle remote learners through the district's remote-learning instruction option.

Rich was one of the district's tech adviser for ninth-grade students, working with students and teachers and ensuring that students were completing their work. With this added responsility Rich has found that many times students are not motivated or supported enough to be successful online learners.

'The truth of the matter is at the high school level students are going to do the work, or they won't. To be a successful remote learner you have to be intrinsically motivated to do your work, and we have some remote learners that are being successful,” Rich said.

With remote learning, masks, social distancing and pandemic fatigue, Rich has found this year to be the most stressful and trying year in her 10-plus years of teaching.

'It's been the hardest year, it really has been. Everything looks different; remote learning has been a challenge, and I think students are more apathetic than they ever have been before,” Rich said.

However, stressful and unrelenting this year might have been, Rich is glad she chose to be a teacher and is hopeful that with a vaccine on it's way and nine months of the pandemic experience, things will improve from here.

'Always for me it's the kids, I love teaching, and I love my kids. I'm a relationship person and building relationships is huge for me,” Rich said.