Enacting Social Change

Master of Science, Walden University

EDUC 6610: Teacher as Professional

February 10, 2021

As a second-year teacher I found it hard to come up with a problem or challenge faced by my school. The problem I decided to use for the assignment in the module is a problem that I know all schools, teachers and communities are going through right now and unfortunately will be for quite some time. The problem that my school and community is currently going through is school organizational issues and priorities during COVID-19, in regard to equity, engagement and health. It is possible that all education instructions are going through the same challenge, but I am basing my ideas and research off of kindergarten to grade 12 schools because I have experienced it first-hand. School closures in the spring lead to a transitions to remote learning which then led to issues and concerns regarding access to technology (Trinidad, 2021). Not only did this pandemic effect the education system but it also effected child labour, violence against children, teen pregnancies, students’ engagement and mental health programs due to social isolation and the lack of support within schools (Trinidad, 2021).

August 2020 came around and school districts here in Alberta, Canada were scrambling because the government announced we would be going back to fully in-person classes. This was troubling for district staff, teachers and families because not everyone felt it was safe to go completely back to in-person. Families who had immune compromised issues felt there had to be an option for families who were at higher risk. That’s when the government left it up to the districts to decide how to make it work for those families. Students had to go back to in-person but districts were allowed to come up with their own way for immune compromised families have their children attend school. Our district decided to have an online proton as well as inperson. This means that the majority of students are in-person, but we have one teacher for teach grade who will teach the students who are enrolled in “learning from home” in the public school system. I’m currently teaching learning from home grade 4 and have forty-seven students total. Thinking about this issue that my school and tons of other schools across the country and world are having, it brought me to back to one of the readings we had to complete this week. The essay Mary Cowhey wrote called Doing Social Justice Work Through Math. The beginning of her essay really spoke to me on how I was feeling throughout this challenge. “Thinks change. We change. If we refuse to change, to adapt, we won’t survive for long” (Nieto, 2014, p.183). This couldn’t be more true in regard to the pandemic teaching lifestyle. Teachers are not trained to teach online. Yes we are trained on technology but not to turn your entire classroom onto an online platform. We had to change and adapt very quickly in the spring of 2020 and we were not really expecting it. If we didn’t learn to change and adapt so quickly, we wouldn’t have lasted and some of us might not have been teachers at this point in time.

My two questions for you are…

Considering education systems all over the world are different and education systems deal with issues differently. how is this pandemic effecting your teaching practice?

Considering online teaching is completely different than in-person teaching so many reasons (engagement, quality of work, attendance, etc.) What different patterns have you witnessed in your online classrooms? Do you have any suggestions/resources for a newbie online teacher?

References

Jose Eos, Trinidad. (2021). Equity, engagement, and health: school organisational issues and priorities during COVID-19. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 53:1, 67-80,

DOI: 10.1080/00220620.2020.1858764

Laureate Education (Producer). (2015a). Are your goals S.M.A.R.T.? [Multimedia file].

Baltimore, MD: Author.

Niesz, T. (2007). Why Teacher Networks (Can) Work. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(8) , 605–610.

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