Skip to main content

Pandemic creates new normal for students and teachers

Lead Summary
, ,
By
Mavis Fodness

The coronavirus pandemic’s full force hit local schools in mid-March when Minnesota officials closed buildings to lessen the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
School closures in South Dakota and Iowa soon followed.
The empty school buildings in Luverne, Hills and Beaver Creek became day cares for essential medical workers, and food service workers prepared hundreds of free, to-go meals for students.
Teachers and administrators had two weeks to figure out how they could teach from home.
The 2019-20 school year ended in late May under a distance-learning model, still an unfamiliar concept at the time.
All spring school activities were postponed and later canceled as the school year closed out.
Students waved goodbye to their teachers in a year-end parade, and 2020 seniors graduated in virtual ceremonies.
School resumed in September and not much had changed.
Luverne High School teacher and part-time Star Herald reporter Jason Berghorst shared his pandemic observations.
“The situation was going to be temporary,” he wrote. “If we took the appropriate, difficult steps then, we’d be back to normal relatively soon.”
 
New normal
Six months after schools first heard of the pandemic, mask wearing and social distancing were common practices in school.
Parents completed simple health screenings on their children at home before sending them to school.
Learning models were regularly adjusted, and “hybrid learning” joined “distance learning” and “in-person learning” in regular vocabulary.
Luverne opened the 2020-21 school year with in-person elementary classes, and hybrid learning debuted at the middle-high school level.
Hybrid learning split each of the sixth- through 12th-grade classes in half, and they took turns meeting in person every other day. When not in school, students attended classes online.
H-BC elementary and secondary students began the school year in person and followed health recommendations from the Minnesota departments of health and education.
The recommendations limited contact between student groups, stepped up cleaning practices, and students and staff wore masks at all times.
At first fall activities were canceled, but Minnesota State High School League officials devised shortened football, cross country, volleyball and tennis seasons.
Winter sports have been postponed until January 2021.
Additional bus routes were added to keep to half the normal capacity to meet social distancing guidelines. Everyone riding in buses to school or to activities wore masks, and students sat in assigned seats.
School districts traced positive cases and discovered that contact with the virus was occurring outside of the school setting.
By November, however, positive COVID-19 cases accelerated within the communities, forcing Luverne Schools to change learning models that would continue until the winter break.
Elementary students moved to hybrid learning and the middle-high school switched to distance learning.
 
Learning and teaching
Distance learning in November proved to be vastly different from what had been experienced in the spring.
Luverne Middle School teacher Jodi Rops shared with the Star Herald in a Dec. 3 story about how her classroom has changed.
She said in March she video-recorded herself presenting math lessons and communicated with students using the Google Classroom app.
Under the hybrid method, Rops would teach the same math lesson two days in a row for each of her student groups.
The repetition forced her to change how she taught, and she embraced technology to bring a somewhat ‘normal’ feel back to teaching.
“Three weeks into school, I decided to go ‘live’ with all students. That meant those at home had to log in at their normal math classtime to get the lesson,” she said.
“This has gone much better for me, and students say they like that, too — more structure for all of us.”
In a Dec. 24 article elementary teachers said they developed a more structured schedule under a hybrid model.
When students are not in school, they complete practice lessons on paper they take home daily in a folder.
“We focus on more instruction in the classroom with more of the practice being done when they are at home,” said second-grade teacher Lori Nath.
“I feel like our day is similar to how it is when all the students are here.”
The changes that the pandemic prompted for education have been challenging.
“I never imagined we would be teaching this way,” said second-grade teacher Laura Louwagie, who is in her 23rd year of teaching.
As the calendar turns to 2021, optimism is developing as elementary students return to in-person learning and the middle-high school returns to hybrid instruction.
If positive COVID-19 cases continue to drop, all students could soon be back to in-person instruction, which is the preferred learning model.
The LHS Class of 2021 has only met once as a group this current school year.
 
No more snow days
Due to the success that the Luverne District has experienced with distance learning, board members recently adopted an e-learning plan that would eliminate the need for snow days in the district.
When weather conditions make traveling to school hazardous, both the Luverne and Hills-Beaver Creek schools (who passed a similar e-learning model earlier) can use technology to teach up to five snow days at home.

You must log in to continue reading. Log in or subscribe today.