A lot of teachers are also authors. In an effort to spotlight their two hats, I feature teacher-authors on both my writing and education blogs. Guests can write about any topic they'd like as long as it revolves around those skills.

Today, I'd like to introduce Anne Clare, a teacher as well as a historical fiction author. Anne Clare is a native of Minnesota's cornfields and dairy country. She graduated with a BS in Education in 2005 and set out to teach in the gorgeous green Pacific Northwest, where she and her husband lived. She also serves as a church musician, singing in and occasionally directing choirs, playing piano, organ, and coronet (the last only occasionally, when she forgets how bad she is at it.) After the birth of her second child, she became a stay-at-home mom, and after the birth of the third she became reconciled to the fact that her house would never be clean again, which allowed her to find time to pursue her passion for history and writing while the little people napped. Although she's back to teaching, she continues to write historical fiction and to blog about WWII history, writing, and other odds and ends at thenaptimeauthor.wordpress.com.

I reviewed her amazing book, Where Shall I Flee, (click for my review and a purchase link) about the battle in Italy during WWII from the perspective of a female nurse. Today, I'm excited to share her story of teaching through the pandemic. With not only apocryphal but statistical stories about the damage done by the pandemic to student learning, I was eager to read about this through the eyes of a teacher in the trenches. I think you'll enjoy this:

Coping with COVID in the Classroom

I've always found that teaching is a profession that requires some flexibility. Since March of 2020, "flexibility" doesn't seem like quite a strong enough word for the mental gymnastics required in maintaining any kind of workable learning environment. All of the teachers I know have their own stories of Covid craziness. Here are a few of mine.

The First Round

As soon as we heard that our state was going into full lockdown, my school's faculty started looking for online options. I teach in a small "church school" with just over a hundred students. Small size has its own challenges, but when it came to pivoting to a new teaching plan, it allowed us to adapt quite quickly. Over Spring Break we set up Google Classroom pages, learned how to do Zoom, and created packets of papers for students' families to pick up and drop off outside the school weekly. By the time break was over, we were ready.

Sort of.

Technical difficulties, struggling students, and the stress of a total change of lifestyle made online learning challenging.

Then there were difficulties with the physical space. My husband worked from home in our bedroom while my eldest daughter did her 4th grade work in her room, my son worked on first grade in his, and my youngest wrapped up her Kindergarten year at our kitchen table, occasionally weeping over the ipad when she couldn't find the correct sheet. Meanwhile, I tried to record lessons in such a way as to keep my students accountable, tried to keep up with online correcting, and tried to be there to assist my children as needed.

While my faculty and I adapted to provide the best learning situation for our students that we could, I didn't complain when we decided to end the school year early. It made sense—the loss of sports and extra curriculars meant that we finished our curriculum ahead of schedule anyway. Perhaps, after summer, things would return to normal.

The Long Haul

As I approached the 2020-2021 school year, I hoped (as I'm sure many did) that maybe things could go back to normal. They didn't.

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