Summer Sobieski
How Covid Has Affected Education
During the past year, Covid has had a significant impact on our daily lives. One of the areas where it had the most influence was on our education. Many children have been having difficulty catching up in school and learning. Many schools across the world have turned to online learning instead of in-person learning, which has a number of disadvantages and challenges. It was difficult for students to learn and comprehend information. Not only did this have an impact on students, but it also had an impact on teachers. I spoke with a couple of our school’s teachers to understand how covid has impacted them.
The first teacher I spoke with was Mr. Ekstein. He stated that the most difficult aspect of the online school was getting to know his students and socializing with them. He told me that he doesn’t recognize all of the students he had throughout online learning since he didn’t get to know them well enough. He also stated that getting students to participate in online learning was difficult for him. When he asked questions, he had trouble getting replies and getting many students to turn on their cameras. He couldn’t tell if they were engaged or not because of this. Another big issue was technology. Technology wasn’t always easy to use, and it didn’t always work as we intended. This has a significant impact on kids’ learning since they were unable to learn all of the information at times while teachers were frustrated.
Next, I talked to Ms. Johnson. She told me she was dealing with some of the same issues, as well as some other troubles. She said it was always a problem to convince students to turn on the cameras, which made it difficult for her to monitor what was going on. She is a math teacher, and she claims that teaching math, in particular, is much more challenging. “It was tough for me not to be able to see over students’ shoulders to see what they were struggling with a math problem” she explained. When a student has trouble understanding a math question, they usually approach the teacher or call them over. “Trying to figure out what a student was struggling with and doing wrong through a screen was hard.”
My last discussion with Mr. Cheney. He stated that he was also dealing with similar issues. “Teaching online was difficult for me since I had to balance teaching and family life at the same time,” he explained. “It was difficult to teach while dealing with children and background distractions.” He also claimed that grading was more difficult online since there were so many different grading sites to update and he had to look through several students’ work, which took a long time. He also mentioned that a big challenge in online learning was a lack of engagement. Since he couldn’t see the students, he said it was difficult to tell if they were listening and understanding the material.
As we can see, covid had an extremely big impact on education. It brought a lot of struggles but we can also take away from the hardships of online learning. Both teachers and students learned a lot from this experience.