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The last five years have not been easy for students or their teachers.

During Covid school closures, teachers, accustomed to using overhead projectors and pencil and paper in classrooms, had to learn to use new technology so their students could learn from home.

When students returned to campuses a year later, some had learning and socialization gaps. There were more behavior problems and chronic absenteeism.

Thousands of California teachers, discouraged by classroom discipline problems, quit the profession. But many took on the challenge, offering students social-emotional support and individualized instruction.

Now, teachers interviewed by EdSource are optimistic. They report that students are making academic and social-emotional progress. 

Keith Carames: Pandemic didn’t stop James Lick thespians

Drama teacher Keith Carames takes the adage “the show must go on” quite literally. 

A pandemic didn’t stop Carames and his students at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco from producing a show, even if it meant doing it virtually.

During school closures in the first year of the pandemic, Carames hired a director through the American Conservatory Theater to use digital storytelling and voiceovers to help students bring the Amanda Gorman poem “The Hill We Climb” to life in a five-minute video.

Once school reopened, Carames was reluctant to have actors masked in live productions, something other schools were doing.

“This is horrible,” Carames recalled. “Like it’s so disingenuous. We’re not using their full instrument. You don’t see their faces. It just made me sick.”

So, Carames hired two playwrights to work with students to write eight original plays based on their experiences during Covid. He then collaborated with the San Francisco Opera Guild to turn two of the plays into musicals.

“Everybody’s in the classroom with masks on,” Caramas said. “We rehearsed with masks on. I was like, OK, we’re going to do a show this year, but it’s not going to be like normal.”

Carames’s answer was to rent a theater space where Covid-tested students could act and be filmed on stage without a mask for 10 minutes at a time. A production company filmed the eight plays.

“We had fans blowing, and we had air filtration, and we had all the protocols in place,” Carames said. 

The result was a one-night event titled “Unmasked: The Covid Chronicles,” complete with a red carpet.

Much has changed since then. Last month, students in Carames’ after-school drama program performed the musical “SpongeBob” in front of a live audience. No one wore masks. Last week, the student actors gathered after school to watch a recording of the video and to eat Mediterranean food provided by their teacher.

“Isn’t that cool?” Carames said.

Sesar Carreño: Central Valley school gets technology boost

Earlimart Middle School classrooms in Tulare County have had a technology boost since Covid closed schools. 

Credit: Lifetouch Photography

Students who once shared computers now each have one provided by Earlimart School District. Students and their families also have district-provided internet access in their homes, said Sesar Carreño, an eighth-grade teacher at the school.

Now teachers use giant smart TVs to share their computer screens during lessons, instead of using overhead projectors and pull-down screens. 

 Carreño says the increased technology in the classroom has been a plus, but the increased access to everything the internet has to offer means more effort by teachers to keep students’ attention.

“They wander off, watch YouTube videos and things like that,” he said. “You say, ‘Hey, hey, don’t do that. Stay on task.’ “

Plagiarism can also be a problem when students copy and paste from the internet a little too often when doing homework. But it’s easy to catch,  Carreño said.

“They don’t change the font … or it looks better than something I wrote at Cal State Northridge or UCLA,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s brilliant.’ We try to catch that, and I do ding them for that.”

Other than policing students on the internet, Carreño says he doesn’t have any more discipline problems than before the pandemic.

“We just had a fight 30 minutes ago in the yard,” he said. “We’re a middle school, so things will happen.”

Carly Bresee: Classrooms are getting back to normal

Carly Bresee was optimistic about her new career when she began her first full year of teaching in 2019. She had wanted to be a special education teacher since she was 5 years old.

But a lifetime of dreaming about teaching didn’t prepare her for teaching during Covid school closures or the increased social-emotional needs of her young students when they returned to school a year later. Bresee teaches transitional kindergarten through first-grade special education students with extensive support needs at Perkins K-8 School in San Diego Unified.

Bresee couldn’t teach her students online like most other teachers. So, she donned a face mask and gloves and made weekly home visits during Covid school closures. 

“You know, kids, especially at that age, and then especially again with students with disabilities, sitting in front of a computer for school just wasn’t a possibility,” she said. “It wasn’t accessible learning.”

But returning to school was even harder, Bresee said. Students had increased social-emotional needs and unexpected behavior that left Bresee and other classroom staff exhausted.

 “We would go home and not be able to do anything else,” she said. “I would go home and fall asleep at like 4:30 in the afternoon.”

Bresee considered leaving the profession then, but is now more optimistic.

“I’m feeling good this year,” she said. “Things are getting back into a routine in my classroom. … It does feel like I’m getting my feet under me again. So, it does feel like I’m headed in the right direction.”

Todd Shadbourne: Teachers became technology converts

Foulks Ranch Elementary teacher Todd Shadbourne was a self-described “pencil-paper guy” until the Covid pandemic closed schools, including his campus in Elk Grove, in the spring of 2020. 

Suddenly, he needed to learn to use online video conferencing programs, classroom management tools and other technology to ensure his students could learn from their homes.

“I’m almost 60, and I was surrounded by younger colleagues who totally just collaborated with me,” Shadbourne said. “I worked with my colleagues and I learned how to do it, and I’m really confident at it now.”

When students returned to school, the computers, classroom management tools and online lessons came with them. The technology now allows students and their parents more access to teachers’ lesson plans and other classroom materials, Shadbourne said.

“I think it has helped me to communicate with parents more,” said Shadbourne, who teaches sixth grade. “I’ve been teaching for a long time, and I remember when they were introducing emails and I remember when we were going to workshops for voicemail. And now, there are so many ways that I can communicate with parents. It’s almost too much.”

And now, when there are technical problems in the classroom, the entire class jumps in to help solve problems, he said.

Shadbourne says his newfound confidence in his ability to use technology has made him more self-assured in other areas as well.

“I’m more willing to try new things, and I’m not afraid to mess up,” Shadbourne said.

Erika Cedeno: Building connections key to student learning

Spanish teacher Erika Cedeno believes connecting with her students is crucial to establishing good relationships with them. She thinks it is even more important since students returned to school after a year of learning in isolation.

Cedeno says she doesn’t have any behavior problems in her classes. Mutual respect and trust are key, she said.

She builds connections, in part, by setting aside time to have conversations with students, and by inviting them to use her classroom to heat up meals or just to hang out during lunch.

“To say hello at the door is not enough,” said Cedeno, who was recently named Teacher of the Year at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita. 

“They need to trust you, and they need to like you,” Cedeno said. “Because if they don’t like you, they’re not going to learn.”

As chair of the world languages department at the school, Cedeno has encouraged other teachers to use project-based learning and to focus more on social-emotional support in the classroom.

She recently applied for a grant to replace the desks in her classroom with tables, so that the students can collaborate in small groups.

“When you collaborate in the real world, you don’t collaborate in rows,” Cedeno said. “With tables, you collaborate, you give feedback, you talk and you say your point of view. I’m creating that environment, and my principal is loving it.”