TEACHING DURING THE PANDEMIC

ARIZONA TEACHERS REACT TO THE PANDEMIC YEAR

April 22, 2021
Daniel E. Ogas

K-12 Education in Arizona has been reimagined due to the coronavirus pandemic, now educators are left to pick up the pieces of all that was missed out on. 

In a letter to Superintendent Kathy Hoffman, a spokesperson for the United States Department of Education said,  “After reviewing Arizona's request, I am pleased to approve a waiver of the requirements ...The intent of these accountability waivers is to focus on assessments to provide information to parents, educators, and the public about student performance and to help target resources and supports. This is particularly crucial this year, due to the COVID pandemic. As a result, we also encourage you and your school districts to consider other steps within your purview to further reduce the stakes of assessments this year, such as excluding their use from students’ final grades, grade promotion decisions, educator evaluations, and local school ratings.

In other words, the standards for students are no longer of intense importance due to the pandemic. 

However, Arizona’s teachers were left to fill in the blanks in a year that was unlike any other. 

According to first year math teacher, Meagan Obregon, “I love my students more than anything, but in terms of regression, they are low.” 

Nancy Close, PhD, an Assistant Professor at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Yale Program in Early Childhood Education, on student regression said, “I’ve been seeing a lot of regression and more than what, in typical times, is developmentally appropriate.”

Obregon says, “I really hope we evaluate our expectations and take into account what we really need our students to know.” Obregon continued, “They are not going to be at their own grade level thinking right now, yet were still giving the same tests as if they are.” 

While Obregons statement aligns with the course taken by the United States Department of Education, teachers who instruct different subjects tend to take a different approach.

In a zoom interview, 8th grade social studies teacher Jenna Chavez said, “With social studies I can do a pretest and go from there” She also said, “I think math and ELA are the hardest subjects to come back from, I cannot even imagine.” 

Chavez was sure to discuss with me about how she felt the lack of face to face contact saying, “I didn’t get that bonding time with them, and they were just sent off.”

Chavez typically is tasked with preparing her 8th graders for the transition to high school, but unfortunately that was a task that she says she feels like she, “Failed” in doing. 

Aside from teachers in the classroom, Administrators who were leading the charge in the effort to provide students with quality instruction despite the lack of connection also felt the stress of their impossible situation. 

Katy Pizzuto is a counselor at an alternative school in Florence, where she works to help students graduate on time after finding their needs were not being met in a general high school setting.

According to Pizzuto, “The first couple months were really quiet.” She continued “A lot of our students kind of checked out.” 

Although the aspect of zoom class made for a lot of students checking out, it also gave public schools the opportunity to be innovative. 

Shawn Abele is a part of the tech team at the Gilbert Unified School District, she says, “We became the most important people in our district.” Abele continued saying, “I was teaching teachers how to use WebEx while on WebEx” 

When I asked Abele how much the virtual platform would change education she said, “I don’t see how it could not change, we needed it.” 

Although the last year has made for many trials and tribulations for teachers in Arizona and throughout the world, it goes without saying that new advances have been made in terms of accessibility for both students and teachers.