Academic Pandemic

Who knew the beginning of the 2020 school year would jump off with a pandemic? After leaving school on March 13th, 2020, I thought we might have a month of quarantine and everything might be back to normal shortly after. Now, as we are entering November, we are still very much so in a similar position. From this unfamiliar experience, I’ve had to adapt to new methods of teaching, starting with online and eventually moving to simultaneous distance learning and in person instruction.

When it came to strictly online learning, I ran into some trouble when it came to grading student’s work and methods of communication. I had already made a connection with last year’s students being in class with them for most of the year, so that wasn’t the problem. However communicating expectations without a discussion was nearly impossible. We were using google classroom to assign, collect, and grade work as well as utilizing it as a place for all questions and comments.

Thankfully once the 2020 school year started, there had been time to communicate between teachers and administration about what would work best for the inevitable and unfortunate circumstances we were dealing with. Was the plan perfect? No. Did we have any truly concrete guidelines to follow? Still no. That is when I decided my motto would become… “go with the flow.”

Once our students were allowed to return to school with a few choosing to stay home and zoom during class, I introduced this, “go with the flow” motto to them and added a fun little hand movement so they can really get into it to make sure we understood that there would be constant changes and we knew to accept them and continually adapt. We are able to hand out work to distance learners and vice versa on pick up/ drop off days. Which eliminates the ineffective format of grading online. We are figuring out what works and what doesn’t day by day and continue to be flexible with our expectations of ourselves and our students.

This isn’t ideal but our students are excited to be back even with the drastic changes from “normal” school and what seems like endless restrictions. Although, I have no idea what will come next, I am going to continue to go with the flow and accept what comes our way.

My name is Deborah Escobar, I just graduated from Sacramento State this May. While my graduation was (thankfully) expected, how my Senior year ended was not. In the middle of March 2020, all my classes transitioned to an online platform. Thankfully, I was already familiar with online classes, so I didn’t struggle with completing my work online. I did struggle with the thought of not getting to say goodbye to classmates and professors I’ll probably never see again. It makes me emotional writing this piece. My last few weeks of undergrad were hard not in content, but realization I had no need to walk on to campus at Sacramento State ever again. I loved Sac State. Over my 4 years, Sacramento had become my home, it had become a place where I had grown so much. Sac State had become a safe haven of mine, and it was ripped away in seconds. This was the place where I had my first job that I loved, the place where I spent hours studying, laughing, and learning. The emotional toll was unexpected, and I know the Class of 2020 will mourn their senior semester for some time. As a working student, and as a student who works with children, both of my jobs were moved online as well. I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to my kids. I worked on campus with children of students (toddlers) and my heart broke knowing I never got to say goodbye. My other job was in South Sacramento, I had that job for 2 years, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to my kids their either. That will be something I mourn for a long time.

Amidst this pandemic, I also started school here at USF- Sacramento Branch. The start of the school year gave me inspiration and motivation, because the program is fantastic so far. I am saddened that I don’t get to meet my classmates this year, and upset because USF is not an inexpensive school, and I really wanted to take advantage of my education. I am doing the best I can to absorb everything and keep motivation, but it is hard because I have been doing months of online school and we already were notified school would be kept online for Spring 2021. The end seems no where near, but I do my best to keep a positive attitude.