TEACHING DURING A PANDEMIC

It’s the highlight of every education major’s undergrad experience: that moment when you embark on student teaching. Leading a classroom—being responsible for creating lesson plans, teaching, and grading—offers teachers-in-training valuable experience and prepares them for their first real classroom.

by Bill Politis     photo by Cydney Scott    Jackie Ricciardi

But none of the seniors enrolled in BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development could have imagined what it would be like to begin their careers in the middle of a pandemic. 

For math education major Sarina Simon (Wheelock’21), teaching three sections of math at Malden High School has meant working out of her apartment for most of the semester. She recently began teaching in a hybrid model: four days a week in person and one day a week of remote teaching and learning. Fellow math education major Emma Lincoln (Wheelock’21) has been teaching in person at Framingham High School in a hybrid model that allows for no more than five students in class (everyone else Zooms in for their lessons) .

The two students talk about the joys and challenges of teaching during  the pandemic: how do you keep the attention of students virtually? How do you get to know them when you’ve never met in person? Both talk about how they’ve been able to forge a connection with their high schoolers despite the hurdles. 

“I was really nervous that I wasn’t going to feel like I was walking away from my student teaching feeling like I would be ready to teach,” Lincoln says, “but I really feel much better than I thought I was going to.”