Brookfield High School teacher Mary Arp stands in her classroom showing the social distance arranging of desks. Typically, she has 28 desks in the room but health guidelines now permit no more than 15.
While there are some parents of Brookfield school students who opted to keep their kids at home for the start of school to learn remotely, or enroll their kids in a cyberschool, no teachers or other employees have chosen not to come back to school or retired due to concerns about the district’s partial in-school learning plan, officials said.
“There’s been concerns. There’s worry. There’s anxiousness,” said Mary Arp, president of the teachers’ union. However, there was an opportunity for teachers to ask questions about plans and preparations for the new school year, and she and administrators answered those questions as best they could, she said.
“We are excited to get back,” said Dawn Burns, president of the non-teaching union. “We know that our staff has taken every precaution that they can at the moment to keep the place clean and safe as they possibly can.”
Those precautions include providing face masks and shields and additional hand sanitizing stations.
“Our employees are great employees, and we know what we need to do and we do our job well,” Burns said. “We’re taking every precaution just like any other business. We’re excited to see our students. We’re doing the best we can with the situation that’s been handed to us.”
The school came back into session on Aug. 27 with most students attending school two days a week and learning remotely the rest of the week. While on the bus and in school, students must wear face masks, keep socially distant and liberally use hand sanitizer. Class size is limited to 15, and clear plastic shields were placed on all desks. Students sitting at their desks do not have to wear face masks.
“I don’t know exactly what the numbers are because I don’t have that information, but, on the hybrid plan, at the high school, we’ll probably only have about 100-120 students in the building,” said Arp, who teaches high school government, psychology, street law and a new class called career pathways.
“The general feeling, I believe, is that people feel very positive that the district has accounted for and is following all those (health) recommendations and guidelines,” Arp said. “A lot of the problems that we’re seeing on the news are places where the kids came back five days, full number of students.”
The small class sizes should be a benefit in at least two areas, Arp said.
“For students who are struggling, you’re gonna have a little more opportunity to work with them. I think a positive is going to be that you’re gonna build that connection with those students that are there. It’s not all bad,” Arp said.
Because not all students will be in class at once, the teachers will have to adapt their teaching methods.
“The way that I’m gonna approach it in my room, and I think that a majority of teachers will do this, is the Google Classroom will be my main vehicle for instruction,” Arp said. “For example, say I was doing something with the constitution, I would have the information and the students would read it, do the activity, then when they came to class, we would discuss the activity and reinforce it, stretch it.”
Remote-only learners, who make up about 20 percent of the student population, will not have that interaction, she said, and will miss their friends.
But, the expectations will be the same whether a student comes to school two days a week or stays home all week, said school Supt. Toby Gibson.
“You’re gonna take a test, you’re gonna take a quiz, you’re gonna be assessed, it’s gonna have a due date, you’re gonna have to turn it in,” he said. “You’re gonna earn a grade, not a pass/fail.”
The school could not plan for every possible scenario students and teachers will face this year, and Arp said the best practice is simply to do it.
“You just need to get in there and just get going and make your adjustments and be flexible and deal with it,” she said.
Arp said she expects there will be a lot of interaction between teachers, students and parents through electronic means, particularly Google Meet and email.
“This is all new to everybody, so I think it’s gonna take a little bit of time until we get it to where we want it,” she said.
