Author: Ju Eun Song ('25)
Photographer: Mischka Suwandi ('24)
Photo Courtesy of Mrs. Stanford
Teaching online was a hard transition for elementary teachers. Teachers had to go through a trial and error process to find an efficient way to teach the elementary students; however, there are still many rewarding experiences that come from online learning.
With the transition from offline learning to online learning, the teachers and students had to go through some technical difficulties. Mrs. Kelsey Nainggolan, the first-grade homeroom teacher said, “We did experience outages with both the internet and computer. Initially, the internet bandwidth wasn't fast enough to handle the increased demand.” Due to the sudden change, slow WiFi, long loading time, and computer lagging were the main challenges of online learning.
Another problem the elementary teachers had to face was not being able to watch over the students in person. Because of online learning, the teachers were not able to be with the students physically; therefore, the teachers struggled to make sure the students were paying attention and were engaged.
Mrs. Rachael Stanford, the fifth-grade homeroom teacher said, “ I could not always see what my students were doing and some days I could not even see their faces. At times I really had no idea whether or not my students were grasping the lesson we were working on.” And as a struggle, she said, “ Getting students to actively engage and share online was really challenging some days.” Making sure the students understand the lesson and providing help for them is much easier offline when teachers can physically see students.
Furthermore, online learning means that students can get easily distracted by a lot of things, making it longer for students to learn a lesson. For the elementary students especially, it was a challenge for the teachers to find a way to educate them with the limited time they have. The teachers tried really hard to keep in touch with the parents, and both the parents and the teachers relied on each other for the children’s learning.
“Lower elementary teachers also really had to rely on parents during online learning. It was only successful because of each parent's continued supporting and valuing their students' education. So to all the parents - thank you a million,” said Mrs. Nainggolan.
Not only did the teachers need to stay in contact with the parents, but due to the sudden impact of COVID-19, it was necessary for teachers to make adaptations to their lesson plans.
Mrs. Nainggolan said, “For younger students, it truly is not possible to fully replicate the classroom learning environment online. Students miss out on both the multi-sensory and social components of learning when online. One of the biggest challenges is the difference in the pace of learning in the classroom versus online. Online we could accomplish about 1/2 of a normal in-person lesson.”
Photo Courtesy of Mischka Suwandi
Not only were the academic classes impacted, but special classes such as PE were also heavily impacted due to online learning. Physical Education requires a lot of physical interaction between the students. But being online, the possible activities students can do are very restricted. Ms. Jamie Fulwood, BAIS’s PE teacher said, “ Elementary P.E. is best done in person as there are parts of their curriculum that rely heavily on games and activities to help motivate students to be physically active to further develop and strengthen their gross motor skills and large muscles.” Since playing games that require physical interactions is impossible during online learning, it was a challenge to keep the students motivated and energized. In PE particularly, it is more fun to have friends to communicate with.
Although COVID-19 has brought a lot of challenges in both teaching and learning, there were some positive takeaways from this experience.
Thanks to the help of parents and the IT department, the students were able to adapt to their new environment quickly. Mrs. Nainggolan said, “ I am so grateful to the parents for their support and understanding as circumstances arose and especially to Mr. Amu and Pak Henry. They were definitely in high demand during online learning and have been instrumental in advancing the technology at BAIS.”
Mrs. Nainggolan said, “The access to technology was huge for students on all levels and also a learning curve for many teachers. COVID has opened up a whole new way of learning in a large part due to the rapid technology advancements that were necessary to continue education for that period of time. I am continually amazed at the iPad/tech skills these students have acquired.
Because of the constant use of technology, it opened up students to many new experiences with technology. They had the opportunity to explore the pros and cons of the online sources and also helped the students build their problem-solving skills within the internet, which could help them in the future.”
The impacts of COVID-19 caused an incredible amount of change to the entire student body, including the elementary students. Although there were technical difficulties, with the help of many adults, the students were able to overcome the walls of online learning. The two years that were affected by COVID-19 were not only filled with negative teaching and learning experiences, but it also opened up new experiences for both the teachers and students.
Comments