Page 19 - South Mississippi Living - May, 2020

COAST NOTE
Keeping kids engaged while being schooled at home.
story by
Kelsey Sunderman-Foster
LEARNING FROM
So much has changed in such a short while, altering the way we live our daily lives. For students and teachers, the announcement of school closures brought about quick but strategized plans for continued education.
HOME
Randi Pope, a 6th grade teacher at D’Iberville Middle School, says that the biggest challenge has been transforming her normal classroom routine into online sessions. “This isn’t something
we were trained for,” she says. “We practice re drills, tornado drills, lock downs, etc., but to just not go to school and still have to teach – we haven’t trained for that. But we are teachers; we always nd a way.”
Pope says that her school already had tools and materials
in place in the classroom that transitioned well to online learning. “We’re assigning computer programs and packets that are already familiar to them,” Pope said. “We’re pairing this with online classes, which I’m teaching twice a week. One of the biggest obstacles is that not everyone has access to the internet, so some families are harder to reach. In these cases, all assignments are available as hard copies that the parents can pick up from the school.”
Belinda Dammen, assistant superintendent of elementary education for the Pascagoula-Gautier School District acknowledges that keeping students’ skills up to date is a priority, one that will continue to be addressed into the next school
year. “We have a pacing guide that our teachers will follow throughout the rest of the year, and next year we plan to refocus on any skills we didn’t get to,” she says. “Right now, it’s all about keeping them engaged and learning.”
Pascagoula-Gautier School District teachers and sta have been active on the district’s website, pgsd.ms, sharing videos of physical education classes and reading aloud to students. “The teachers have adapted quickly and are enjoying being able to engage with their kids through these videos,” Dammen said. “It’s clear that they miss their students as much as their students miss them.”
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