Pictured is a bench where students can drop off materials and scholarship applications. OBSERVER Photo by Brooke D’Agostino.

With all area school districts transitioning to alternative learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift in learning has caused a strain on the ability of the students to learn in their normal way.

It has also provided teachers at all levels with some difficulties in their abilities.

Teachers all over are forced to completely re-evaluate their standard methods.

“I’ve been teaching for over 20 years; all of those years have been done in a classroom,” said Cassadaga Valley teacher Tammy Rice. “Now I’m teaching from home, and I’m learning new things every day.”

Rice, who teaches both government and seventh grade social studies, has had to adapt from her normal classroom to now teaching from her countertop at home. Thanks to advancements in technology though, the transition has been a little easier than it might have been for others.

This is class being conducted for Cassadaga Valley Middle School. Submitted Photo.

Rice has been using online methods to aid her teaching for the last few years, at the advisement of Cassadaga Valley’s technology coordinator. Because of that, Rice is a little ahead of the curve, though she’s still learning on the fly.

“I’m by no means an expert, but I’ve spent the last few years using several different programs like Google Classroom and Zoom,” she said. “I’m learning on the fly and every teacher has a different comfort level, but we as teachers have the students best interests at heart.”

Part of the learning curve for Rice is how her students are teaching her.

“They always help me out, like they let me know if I can open up PDFs on Google Classroom,” Rice said. “Or they let me know if I have to send something in a different format, and I would never know how to do stuff like that without the help of my students.”

Rice is on her computer for a majority of the day and is in frequent contact with students in the time she would normally see them in class.

“I feel that I’ve used my computer more in the last two weeks than I did the three months before,” she said.

The biggest difficulty Rice faces is the assessment of a student who may be struggling. When in a classroom, it’s easier for a teacher to see when a student is struggling just by walking around the classroom, but due to the nature of online learning, the onus is more on the student to let the teacher know they’re struggling.

“Teachers learn a lot from visual cues,” Rice said. “Those cues are absent when they’re learning from home. The students have to learn how to advocate for themselves. We have to do our best to make sure the students are comfortable. It’s hard not being able to assess progress or frustrations of students.”

Rice said while people may think the kids want the extended break, the opposite may actually be true.

“It’s shocking how many kids want to be in school,” she said. “Everyone probably assumes the kids want to be home but I’ve received so many messages from students saying how much they want to be in school.”

Though high school teachers face several challenges with online learning, their adaptation can be made easier by the fact the kids are veteran students this late in their school careers.

Caroline Ventresca, a kindergarten teacher at Gowanda, expressed that part of the teaching that goes on with kids that young are developmental skills.

“We do a lot of work on social, emotional work, and motor skills,” Ventresca said. “It’s really learning how to function in the school community, and those are kinds of things we can’t just put in a packet.”

Ventresca is reaching out to her students as much as possible, though reaching some of the students is proving to be difficult as well.

“I’ve been calling kids two or three times a week,” she said. “I’ve left a lot of messages, and do a lot of communication through the Remind app. Kids that I’ve been able to get a hold of I can get ahold of, but the ones that are difficult to get ahold of make it hard. We don’t want to overwhelm parents. People are very stressed out about this situation, and we want to support the students and families as best we can.”

Despite a lowered ability to teach all of the necessary things a kindergarten teacher needs to teach, Ventresca feels good about Gowanda’s plan overall. Gowanda Elementary School is one of the schools who handed out learning packets to the students, which were prepared for a period of about a month.

“We made the packets for a four-week period,” she said. “They’re saying the return date is April 20 but a lot of districts are closing for rest of year. I’m praying that doesn’t happen to us, and we put the packets together not thinking we’d be gone this long.”

With the expected return date of April 20 looking to be in jeopardy, Ventresca said the communication within the district has made her feel comfortable regardless of what the plan is moving forward.

“If I had it my way, I’d be with them,” Ventresca said. “But I feel good about plan, if they do decide this needs to go longer. There’s good communication with teachers, admininstration, and community and we can make it work. We just want everyone to be supported.”

While distance learning for younger students poses various obstacles, those veteran students in high school see them too. Out of all the classes in school, the one that might require the most hands-on learning is physical education. Many people might wonder what the students will be able to do without the gymnasium or the pool. At Dunkirk High School, the physical education department is doing its best to keep in contact with students and make sure they’re staying physically active.

According to physical education teacher Mike Sarratori, the Dunkirk teachers are contacting their students as much as they can through the Remind app and they also have Google Docs students are checking in on. Some of the things the physical education department is looking for is students charting their exercise and their nutrition too.

“We’re staying in contact with the kids to meet any of their needs,” stated Sarratori. “I know it’s tough because kids might not have access to the Internet. … We’re trying to make sure the kids know we’re there for them even if it’s not a school issue.”

An issue that teachers in any department could run into is students simply just not doing the work, but at Dunkirk High School the guidance department has mentioned giving students extra incentive to stay connected.

Sarratori told the OBSERVER, “One of the last things we discussed was giving them incentives if they reach a certain goal, so they can be rewarded with something other than grades.”

Sarratori added that potentially gift cards would be the extra incentive and that the goal is to make sure the students are staying in contact.

One sentiment echoed by all teachers was how much they miss their students.

“It’s stressful when you’re not expecting to be out of school,” Ventresca said. “At the end of the year, teachers normally mentally and emotionally shut down from a class when they realize they’re going on. It’s been difficult because I love my class, they’re such a great group of kids.”

“It’s hard not seeing students every day,” Rice said. “I miss the daily conversations. This seems less personal.”