“There Isn’t Anything Too Hard for an Educator”

Patrick Cady High School History Teacher, San Fernando, CA

Cherish Pipkins Elementary School Principal, Lancaster, TX

Ron Grosinger High School STEM Teacher, West New York, NJ

Latonia Johnson Elementary School Reading Teacher, Lancaster, TX

Osley Cook High School Music Teacher, Dallas, TX

Melissa Wendorf Elementary School Teacher, Los Angeles, CA

Before the pandemic, elementary school principal Cherish Pipkins had a routine. She would stand in the foyer of Rolling Hills Elementary School in Lancaster, Texas, and greet her students one by one, offering high-fives, fist bumps, and hugs.

“I loved greeting every child,” she says.

In March of last year, however, COVID-19 brought those greetings to an abrupt halt. To slow the spread of the virus and protect public health, schools across the country closed their campuses and pivoted to remote and hybrid learning, a rapid and unprecedented disruption to the educational system.

As Pipkins worked to keep her staff and students safe and on track, adjusting to a challenging and stressful new normal that educators ultimately met with courage and creativity, she found herself missing those small moments of personal connection with her students—moments that couldn’t be duplicated over a video call.

“I missed pulling them in close to let them know that you’re loved, you’re cared for,” she says. “I missed just being able to encourage them.”

This fall, school districts from New York to California are returning to full-time, in-person instruction. And while the ongoing pandemic means that things won’t be quite the same as before—Pipkins, for instance, plans to limit her greetings to elbow taps—educators and students largely will be back in classrooms.

To better understand the lessons frontline educators have taken from the last year—and what they’re most excited about moving forward—we spoke to six from across the country:

Question One

What are you most looking forward to about the coming school year?

In the spring of 2020, closures affected at least 55.1 million students in 124,000 U.S. public and private schools. Almost overnight, American primary education shifted online—and while many districts have since offered at least some in-person instruction, this fall will bring the largest number of students back to campus since the start of the pandemic.

Question Two

What was remote learning like for you as an educator?

When the pandemic began, many educators had little experience with remote learning. On the fly, teachers had to figure out how to instruct and connect with students through computer screens—a sudden and jarring transition from physical classrooms.

Question Three

How did remote learning affect your students academically?

Like educators, students were unaccustomed to remote learning: prior to the pandemic, fewer than 1 percent of American students in grades K-12 attended virtual schools full time.

Question Four

How did remote learning affect your students emotionally and socially?

For children, the benefits of education aren’t purely academic. From classrooms to cafeterias to sports courts and fields, schools are places for social and emotional connection and growth. Conversely, a lack of social interaction can take a toll on students’ mental health and emotional well-being.

Question Five

What can educators do this year to help students catch up academically?

After more than a year of remote and hybrid learning, educators are concerned about learning loss among students, particularly students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Now more than ever, you have to think about a student as a campfire. If you take a huge log and dump it on a fire and you try to light it, what’s going to happen? It’s not going to light. The log is too big. So then you start over by adding small kindling and it lights up right away. But you know that’s not enough to sustain a fire. So you have to put the larger branches next. Then you can put the log on.

With kids, you’re trying to light the fire. So you need to teach what is needed at the time it’s needed. Too much information will actually smother the fire—and once you smother that fire, it’s hard to restart it. As a teacher, you feel pressure to cover all of your agenda. You’re like, “I have a curriculum, I have to get to my curriculum.” This year, it doesn't matter what curriculum you have. You have to be real careful about how you build up your fires.

Ron Grosinger

Question Six

What can educators do to help students catch up socially and emotionally?

Lonely and isolated, many students stuck at home have faced unprecedented emotional and mental health challenges.

Question Seven

What did you learn about using digital tools over the last year, and how do you plan to use them in the future?

A national survey of public school leaders found that one in five have already adopted, plan to adopt, or are considering adopting virtual school as a permanent offering. And by one expert estimate, the number of school districts nationwide that provide all of their students with computers or tablets has increased from 30 to 80 percent.

During COVID, I originally started with putting up video lessons—watch the video, answer questions. I quickly lost the group. This is old school, one-way communication. If you stand there and say, “all right, class” and you just lecture, they’re going to zone out.

Students need to interact. They need collaborative work. When you’re in the classroom, they can see what you’re doing. They interact with you, and they see [other] kids working on stuff. If you have a collaborative platform online, you can recreate the community experience from the classroom. So what I want to do [in the future] is have virtual communities. I don’t want students handing me their work. I want them to put it in the cloud and [other students] get to see it. For example, I can have five students working on the same vehicle virtually using CAD [computer-aided design], which is just a modern version of hand-drafting or blueprinting. And this is amazing, because when we have meetings, I can check and say “Okay, Jim, did you work on suspension? Let me see.” And then Alex is like, “Hey, maybe I could help Jim with that because it doesn’t look like that's going to fit. Let me see it work.” And you can actually see the pieces move.

Ron Grosinger

Question Eight

What changes from the last year would you like to see carry forward?

The once-in-a-lifetime disruption of the pandemic is creating and accelerating transformation across American education, with many educators seeing an opportunity to rethink and reimagine the way they teach, work, and ultimately serve students.

I think teachers have realized that digitizing assignments is not just beneficial for kids. It’s beneficial for us. If I’m able to make a digital test through our website where I don’t have to grade every single thing, it’s so much quicker. Or essays—[instead of] the huge stacks of papers that I would bring home, all I have to do is bring my laptop.

There are [digital] tools where you can give suggestions to the kids as they’re working on assignments, which not only did I use, but also had them peer review with each other, so they were editing on their friends’ pages and giving suggestions. And why can’t kids use an online site instead of their math workbooks so they aren’t having to bring their textbooks back and forth every single day?

In this day and age, we’re going away from using pen and paper for things in the workforce. So why aren’t we doing it as much in the classroom?

Melissa Wendorf

The comment that we heard over and over again [from parents] was, ‘I didn’t realize how much work you all did as teachers!’ We heard it countless times. We started having parents drop off desserts, bring donuts. They just wanted to show their gratitude and appreciation. It was amazing to see my teachers and staff be recognized for the work that they put in. It was really refreshing.

So one thing I learned, and this is honest and sincere, is that there isn’t anything too hard for an educator. We are, like, figure-it-out-type people. Just give us a moment and we’re going to start scribbling out solutions. We’re going to brainstorm. [During the pandemic,] our innovation went to another level. We were coming up with ways to keep our students and our parents with us. I think that gave us more confidence. And it bonded people: Okay, we’re going to figure this out together.

Cherish Pipkins

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