Elementary school teacher adapting to online teaching
by Randy Flores
Kelvin Flores currently works in the Department of Education (D.O.E), as a fifth grade teacher at Ps.257 (John F. Highland Elementary school). In Brooklyn, New York. Flores is currently teaches grades one through five.
Due to Covid-19 there are many lives that have been altered. For Flores as an inner city public school teacher, the change from teaching in a classroom to remote learning has been a shock. Flores states, “For us teachers having to create an online remote learning curriculum on such short notice was difficult for us and much harder for our younger students to adapt at first.”
(Photo: Inside schools)
Flores has been using Google classroom to incorporate remote learning. In addition, he also uses websites like Khan academy, Super Teacher Worksheets, to structure his lessons and classwork. Although the transition has been made, there have been difficulties. Flores said, “Going from seeing my students everyday face to face and being able to help them as soon as I saw a problem made the learning experience much better but because of unexpected awareness I have to be very precise when I introduce new material so my students they understand and don’t feel overwhelmed.”
Google class room is used as a virtual tool to add assignments for students. Khan academy gives the opportunity to teach grade levels from one to twelve.It gives great information on math, science, writing, grammar and reading to incorporate into google class room. Super teacher worksheets is a website that has a lot of reading articles that test reading levels, grammar and comprehension skills.
Another way to in cooperate online teaching is through Zoom. Zoom has been a website that is used as an online video chat service that allows up to 100 people to be on the same call. Zoom has been very helpful in this process because Flores is able to talk to his colleagues on a weekly basis, Flores said “it is very helpful to see my colleagues faces and hear how their experience to online teaching is going because there is always something you can learn from others that I can use to make my kids experience better.”
There are positives to remote learning, it is giving the opportunity for different type of learners to absorb information with videos, pictures and documents. In turn, Flores colleagues are finding it difficult to adjust to their privacy concerns involving Zoom. One of Flores colleagues who is also is a fifth grade teacher. Mr.Bussi stated, “due to the volume of new users on Zoom, many intruders have entered my Zoom meetings with students.” In order to solve the issue teachers are now required to use other outlets like google hangout.
As difficult as this time has been, Flores said, “I see my students getting better as the weeks go on, I am surprised how fast my students have adapted to online learning.” Many students no matter the education they are receiving, it has been difficult from going from the way everyone is used to being taught which is being in a classroom while the teacher or professor lectures on the topic to going and having to learning to complete work on your own and figuring out the to the questions you have.”
Reporter Randy Flores is taking this time to get my work done and I hope you find my article useful , stay aware during this national pandemic.
