Teachers face struggles in the middle of a pandemic

By Owen Smith

March 12, 2021

January marked an end to a rough first semester of this pandemic school year. Colonie Central High School has teachers directing classes in person while also finding ways to teach to students learning from home. Teachers in the district have spoken about the troubles and successes of this modified schedule.

Christine Meglino, a journalism and English teacher at Colonie, says that she has seen many of her students struggle with the task of learning virtually. Many of her failing students have since switched to attending school every day and their grades have improved.

Colonie’s AP biology and molecular biology teacher, Jason Goldberg, feels for students trying to learn from home. He says that students suffer from a lack of routine this year and that the few students that come into school are only in once or twice a week, which hurts the routine too.

Meglino also worries about the lack of routine provided in hybrid learning. “I tend to do Google Meets because I want them to remember what school is like and to really structure it like a class so that they don’t feel like they have to learn on their own,” she said.

As the teacher of Colonie’s two advanced biology programs, Goldberg included a lot of hands-on activities and lab work into his curriculum. This year, he had to figure out ways to allow students to understand concepts from their computers instead of from working in the classroom.

“For mole bio, it’s a lab-based class as you know. It’s depressingly hard to try and get you guys the full experience of doing all these lab things when you’re watching a screen,” Goldberg said.

This challenge is put into perspective when you realize the tiny amount of students that make the travel to school. On a normal day, Goldberg only sees an eighth of his students sitting in his classroom.

Both Colonie teachers believe that it’s harder to make sure students are on task when they are learning miles away from their teachers.

When talking about his plans on teaching through Google meets, he says, “I know very well you’re not sitting there watching me the entire 40 or sometimes 84 minutes of the science class.”

Meglino also mentions that telling high school students to sit at a table at home with their Chromebook all day is like a joke to them. She says that there are many distractions at home and it is very easy to start spiraling and to avoid work.

As vaccines are beginning to be distributed, we can begin to wonder how the 2021-2022 school year will look like.