Teachers and students get in the groove
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
The Hatz family — parents Brian and Jill, who are math teachers at Mainland Regional High School, and daughters Raylee, 7, and Annalee, 4 — work together in their dining room.
LINWOOD – The switch from classroom instruction to remote instruction due to schools shutting down during the COVID-19 crisis has presented challenges to teachers and students.
Public and private schools around the state began working online from home March 16 in connection with efforts to slow the spread of the pandemic.
Mainland Regional High School and its sending districts, along with a Somers Point-based charter school, released a Joint District Response to the National Health Emergency to students and parents March 14 announcing that the schools were closing to students until March 30. Gov. Phil Murphy later changed that timeline to “closed until further notice.”
The change required teachers to set up methods to teach remotely to students working from home, a change that has had a huge emotional and psychological impact on everyone involved.
“A lot of students have a hard time organizing themselves. They’re used to hearing a bell telling them where to go and when,” Mainland teacher Jill Hatz said.
She decided to “treat it like the beginning of the year, because you are starting new routines, new ways to deliver instruction, new ways to assess. For my students, it was a crazy first couple days (as expected with an unusual and sudden change like this), but once our class routines, rules and assignments were established, it has gone very well. A lot of students reached out in the beginning just to talk on a video conference. Now I’m finding they’re a little more comfortable with all of this and are reaching out for help.”
During the second week of remote instruction, Hatz, 36, who is in her 14th year of teaching math, with classes in college prep geometry and college prep algebra II, said based on video chatting with some students that they were getting used to the new routines.
“The initial shock has worn off on a lot of them,” she said. “Overall the biggest thing they are settling into is where to go once logged in.”
The students are using Microsoft Office 365 and a platform called Teams to log their attendance and get their assignments, as well as communicate with teachers and submit their completed work.
“That was really key in getting everybody on the same page,” Hatz said. “It gave them one application to focus on and go to.”
She said she prepared for the change by taking in-class routines and turning them into online routines “as seamlessly as I could, trying to maintain the same structure: attendance, daily check-in, warmup, assignment, exit ticket. In doing so, the students felt more organized and they didn’t have to cope with a new class style, as well as the learning-from-home concept. ‘Grab a laptop’ turned into ‘Open up Teams.’ ‘Do your warmup/activity/exit ticket’ turned into ‘Go to the Assignments tab … ’ I sent a new syllabus to my students explaining how our online classroom would work. I created an organizer they could use, too.”
She said she took some extra time to go over the classrooms operations with students and began by reviewing “so they don’t have to focus on content.”
“The biggest stress is not the academic part but getting used to being home, setting a schedule,” Hatz said, adding that she created an organizational chart students can use, almost like an agenda book.
She said she polled students about how they would like to receive instruction and found that about a third wanted to have live video chat sessions, another third just wanted videos that they could watch on their own time and the final third wanted notes written out with guidance.
“I’m going to try to cater to all three,” Hatz said.
She plans to write out the lessons and upload them, then record the live video chat sessions and send the recording to students so that everyone gets the type of instruction they desire.
Hatz said the hard part is not the academics and learning.
“Once we get into a routine that is going to be the simple part,” she said. “The hardest part is more the emotional side and dealing with change and the unusual situation we are finding ourselves in.”
She said not knowing when things will return to normal and the uncertainty is difficult for both teachers and students.
“I miss them a ton. It’s hard on us, too,” Hatz said. “The emotional and psychological part is the hardest part in all of this for people.”
She said about 70 percent of her job is dealing with the mental health of students and making sure everyone is doing well, and 30 percent is academics. She noted that teachers have to balance those things in the classroom every day but “it has shifted al little more toward that health aspect with this going on.”
Hatz also said there is help for those who need it via the main office telephone number at (609) 927-4151.
“I met with our Resiliency Team yesterday to discuss any immediate needs of the students. Students are able and encouraged to reach out to their teachers, counselors, coaches, Child Study Team, etc., if they are having difficulty with anything. We want our students and parents to know we’re here when they need us.”
In addition, she said, teachers have been instructed to reach out and check in with students, especially those who are not turning in assignments.
Hatz and her husband, Brian, 39, who is also a math teacher at MRHS, have a 7-year-old daughter, Raylee, and a 4-year-old (almost 5) daughter, Annalee, at home, resulting in a big change for her personally as well.
“The first week was a little chaos,” she said. “As with any big changes, it’s going to take a little time to get used to.”
She said she initially “felt like I was torn in seven different directions,” noting that she was creating a new teaching routine, keeping up with emails from students and staff and taking care of children at the same time. But said like most of her students, the family is now settling into a routine.
The 2002 MRHS graduate from Northfield said her daughters are using MobyMax, ABC Mouse, Epic!, Seesaw, Google Classroom and Zoom for their home instruction.
“The transition into online learning was overwhelming at first for me. I had three of us to get into a new routine. It took my daughters a couple days to really understand they weren’t ‘off’ and still had to do school work. By day 4 or 5, we were in a groove and it’s been going very well,” Hatz said. “We are enjoying our time with our daughters, but it is devastating to not see our students every day, in person. Video conferences definitely help with that, but it’s not quite the same.”
In an attempt to lighten the mood amid a frightening time, Hatz also created “FUN POSTS” to stay connected with her classes.
“The other day people posted pictures of their pets to share,” she said.