Memoirs of a Teacher-Intern During a Pandemic

(Let it be known that while I talk about the downsides of masks and desk sheilds and hybrid classrooms, I am in full support of these measures to keep schools safe)

This pandemic has been hard on everyone. Jobs lost, loved ones lost, sanity lost. Work and school shifted to online. It was and still is stressful, at least for me. I am in my last semester of my Master's program and that comes with a semester-long internship student-teaching. The semester before, my first semester of grad school, was completely online. It sucked. I had a teacher at one of the local high schools whose classes I would still drop in on, virtually. She didn't require her student's cameras to be on so it was her face, my face, and the rest were blank squares. It was fantastic (she said sarcastically) considering it was in preperation for the full internship I would start in January.

Due to the pandemic, my college gave us the option of either doing a face-to-face internship, virtual internship, or to delay our internship until Fall 2021. I still jumped at the chance to do a face-to-face internship, having at least a general idea of what that would entail. I have been in my internship for almost a month now and it's certainly different. Masks, desk sheilds, quarantine lists, virtual students, all new to an intern who hadn't physically been in a school in almost a year. Within the first week, there was almost a covid-scare with my mentor teacher which, if she had had to go into quarantine, would've left me with her classes I barely knew, in a school I barely knew, and a myriad of different teachers having to cover her classes as the school doesn't have any substitutes available. Matching faces to names is next to impossible so I have been trying to match personalities to names, studying my mentor teacher's seating charts as if I were studying for a test.

By the end of the first couple weeks, the school's quarantine list grew and the students were being sent home in droves. Any student who tested positive sent at least 7-10 other students into quarantine which meant constant flexibility from my mentor teacher and myself. Students would come back to school from quarantine and have to go back into quarantine the same week because they came into contact with another student who tested positive. All this is made even harder by the procedures my school has to go through when a positive test occurs. It is not enough for the school to confirm which student tested positive and which surrounding students need to go into quarantine, the health department has to come in to confirm what the school reports. While this is probably necessary, it is fairly inefficient. For example, there was a student in my mentor teacher's class who tested positive and the school administration came in to measure to see which surrounding students would have to go into quarantine. This was on a Wednesday. After reporting to the health department, the delay was so long, the students were not told until the following Monday that they needed to go into quarantine, almost 3 days later, during which time those students still came to school because there was no "official" word from the health department confirming what the school already knew. And, when the students were eventually released from school, it was not even 30 minutes into their first period class, essentially coming in and having to go right back out.

Lesson planning is still something I am relatively new to. Lesson planning during a pandemic has been an absolute whirlwind and not in a good way. I've had to scrap the majority of ideas I've had because they wouldn't be feasable with a hybrid classroom. Where I expected to be up and moving around the classroom when I lectured I now just sit at my mentor teacher's desk to cater to the virtual students and even if I can lecture, I am relegated to a small area a camera on a tripod in the front of the room covers. Classroom management is increasingly difficult due to both the fact I'm sitting at a desk all class and the desk sheilds make it harder to make sure the students are paying attention, let alone to someone they just met not too long ago.

While all this has been a steep learning curve, I will say that a positive of doing my internship in a pandemic is getting the experience of handling a hybrid classroom before I actually get into my own. Having to watch my mother, an elementary ESE resource teacher, learn everything on the job at the start of the pandemic last year showed me how hard it was and still is for current teachers. Watching my mentor teacher balance it in a high school setting where I plan to teach, has shown me how it looks with young adults. While I hope we will be closer to a "normal" school life by the next school year, I am still anticipating the same conditions I am in now which has made me feel a little more prepared. My resolve to still become a teacher has not wavered and I am nervously excited to see what the rest of the semester brings. To all the current teachers out there, you're doing an amazing job and to any other teacher-interns who come across this, stick with it because the world needs us, and you're not alone.