(CENTERVILLE) – Stacie Ebnet Dietz said the hardest part of the school shutdown so far was seeing her students, fleetingly, during a materials pick-up recently at the school, where she teaches third grade. The students are out until at least early May because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and teachers have been working since mid-March on distance learning plans.
“It was teary,” said Dietz of the quick time with her students during pick-up. “It was hard. You miss being there with them.”
Teachers everywhere have had to master distance learning tools and platforms, made easier by high-speed internet access and apps that allow for real-time face-to-face interaction.
“I think as an educator, you’re always trying to find ways to new and fresh and stay very current with programs and platforms,” she said. “Just shifting your mindset and wrapping your head around what that meant for my third graders, my learners, and how to make it seem like a seamless transition from where we left off before Spring Break.”
Dietz and other educators hope this experience will help them apply these principles to learning in the future–even when everyone can be back in the classroom.
“There definitely is much we have learned through this process and creation of what we’re doing that will definitely be utilized going forward,” she said.
Catch the entire interview with Dietz here, in the latest episode of Conversations:
