The pandemic affected everyone in myriad ways. Your experience is likely different than that of the educator down the hall. When the pandemic began in spring 2020, ATPE members shared their experiences with us—what the last few months of the 2019-20 school year were like and what they hoped to see come fall 2020.

As the 2020-21 school year went on, you continued to share your stories. Now, one year later, we’ve reached back out to those who first spoke with us and also invited first-year teachers to recollect.

FOR THOSE WHO ENTERED THE PROFESSION IN FALL 2020, IT WAS QUITE THE FIRST YEAR.

How did this year meet your expectations for your first year, despite the challenges of the pandemic?

Theresa Garza, May 2020 graduate, Edinburg CISD first-year elementary self-contained special education teacher: My expectations were that I would make the best of what was to come. Teaching special education was something I knew was meant for me. I knew I would love it, and I am glad to say that I love my teaching position.

Alyssa De Leon, May 2019 graduate, Santa Rosa ISD chemistry and physics teacher: This year was nowhere near what I expected. As a first-year teacher, I would say one of the biggest challenges is not getting to know my first-year students [in person].

How was this year different than what you expected?

Garza: Starting in March [2021], I began to teach a hybrid model. I teach six students in person while simultaneously teaching the rest of my students through Google Meet. I did not expect I would have to teach in a way that hasn’t been done before. I graduated from college in May 2020, so we were never taught how to do this.

De Leon: Like many others, I expected the pandemic to end way before my first year would. I was excited to meet my students face-to-face, but instead I only know what they choose to show during my virtual meetings. I expected to be teaching face-to-face and learning the ins and outs of classroom management firsthand instead of virtually.

What has this year been like for you?

De Leon: Although this year has been a challenge, I have seen my students grow immensely. From not knowing how to multiply (without a calculator) to being able to give me answers in scientific notation, they have shown such great effort in everything they do. I have learned so much about the behind the scenes of being an educator, and although we are still in a pandemic that has greatly affected the education of students, I have found ways to be innovative, challenging, and supportive with my students. 

What is one thing you will remember about your first year teaching?

Garza: I will remember my students. I have some whom I have never seen in person, only through a camera. But I will not forget a single student. They are what makes teaching so special.

De Leon: This year is definitely going to be one I remember forever. One thing that will stick in my mind will be the determination of my co-workers, how I had to motivate our students to keep going, and the brainstorming we all had to contribute to help engage our students more into our lessons.

What is one thing you want people to know?

Garza: Teachers are doing everything possible to reach their students. This year has not been what anyone would have imagined. But teachers are making it work, and they are working tirelessly for their students. I want future educators to know that no matter the situation they enter when they begin teaching, there is support for you. I have found support through my district, online groups, and the Charles Butt Scholarship for Aspiring Teachers. Do not be scared to enter the profession; there will be someone willing to help you.

De Leon: Always come into the classroom with a positive and open mindset. Our students will be our legacy, and we have to understand as their teachers/role models that they all learn in different ways. This will help you in the classroom as students will feel more comfortable to ask questions, and it will create a safe and positive learning environment.

EVEN THE LONGEST-SERVING EDUCATORS FACED NEW OBSTACLES THAT TESTED THE LIMITS OF THEIR EXPERIENCE.

What has this year been like for you?

Roya Dinbali, Nacogdoches ISD forensic science teacher: I’ve never felt more overworked, frustrated, and angered with life in general. You never know what the next day is going to bring, and with me being a planner, that makes it much harder and defeating. I’m just a hands-on type of person, so trying to do things with students remotely while performing labs just doesn’t work smoothly. There is a huge difference between seeing the students in person vs. online learning, so getting them to fully understand what you’re trying to teach has been difficult. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but there are many things we could have done differently, and if we had done a few things differently, I believe the year would have gone much smoother.

Kally Evans, Willis ISD science teacher: When I reflect on this year, one word comes to mind: busy. I have just felt busy, like I do not have enough time in the day to accomplish everything I want to accomplish. This has been the year I have truly had to put my time management skills to use. On top of teaching both online and in-person students for sixth grade science and accelerated science, we lost an eighth grade science teacher, and I took on a third prep teaching an eighth grade science class starting in January. During that time, my sixth grade partner went on maternity leave, so I took on the responsibility of opening the online activities and collecting grades for the entire sixth grade. My motto is “just do the work,” so that’s what I did. I am a team player, and this year has been all-hands-on-deck. Ultimately, it is about the kids and what is best for them. I knew I could take on the extra responsibility, even if it pushed me to an uncomfortable level of busy, so I did.

Lotus Hoey, Houston ISD ESL teacher: This year has been crazy. “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” has been my motto all year! Not to blame anyone, but it has been truly trying.

Tiffany Keszler, Ganado ISD elementary music teacher: This year has been rather normal, for the most part. We started school face-to-face, following all protocols, such as wearing face coverings, social distancing, etc. We were not able to host some of our regular school activities and events. We did get the opportunity to have sporting events; however, tickets were limited. Our district has never relaxed the guidelines and has followed them to a T since the beginning. At first, it was difficult to contact trace and figure out who had to quarantine or stay home. We did offer online services, but it was quickly reversed since 90% of our student body returned to school within the first couple of weeks.

Ty Morrow, Brazosport ISD coordinator of safety, security, and emergency management: This year has been a whirlwind of compromises, changes, and false starts, and then a groove was found in this pandemic. The district and its staff, through lessons learned, determined that our key to success this year was to remain flexible. The plan we implemented got our solution recognized on “Good Morning America.”

Joe Zambrano, Weslaco ISD chemistry teacher: Gale winds blasting, rain striking horizontally, electrical transformers exploding—Hurricane Hanna was in full swing in Hidalgo County, and so was the school year in Weslaco ISD. If isolation, family loss, over half a million in this country lost to COVID, and lack of classroom access was not enough, we now had students’ homes with structural damage and lack of electrical power. I wish I could say this was the top of the roller coaster and everything was downhill from here, but our school district was hacked before the first semester was over. The district servers were being held hostage by ransomware. We had to quickly improvise, adapt, and overcome so we could meet the needs of our students. We are teachers, that is what we do—we roll with the punches. We supported each other, licked our wounds, and moved past this hack. Now, was the worst behind us? Not by any means. Our district is approximately 8 miles from the Mexican border, and we are a Title I district. This had a major impact when a natural disaster came to us in the form of a freeze. Our region was not prepared for this additional catastrophe. Many homes had water mains bursting, adding further structural damage to homes that were recently underwater and exposing them to the natural elements. Logging on to class was no longer a priority; finding a place to sleep, food to eat, and water to drink was the primary concern for several weeks. This is when teachers had to continue to up their game.

How did you handle a year of teaching during COVID?

Dinbali: Taking it one day at a time and trying not to be so hard on myself (easier said than done). Basically, seeing what I had control of and accepting things I didn’t have control of no matter how hard they were and to keep moving forward. Every day I knew things could change, and it felt like an emotional roller coaster. It still does.

Evans: What has helped me was staff appreciation, community service, and boundaries. This year I have felt so supported and appreciated by my admin and fellow staff members. It’s the little things that help, like personal notes on my desk, a head in the door to see if I need anything, grabbing my daughter from the school next door and bringing her to me, and surprise chocolate-covered espresso beans when they see I have been running around. I have had hardships with losing my dad to COVID, no doubt, but many have had it worse—especially within our school community. Our NJHS has been hosting a mobile food bank once to twice a month, and it has been my joy to show up and work. Helping the school community during the hardships has really brought things into perspective. This year I have had to set hard boundaries between my school and home life. The day my youngest said, “You are always working, and I need time with you” was the day I decided that I will not bring schoolwork home. Leaving the work laptop at school and putting vacation responders on my email has been a great help in maintaining established boundaries. Family time is essential in keeping me from total burnout. They are my reset button.

 Hoey: Flexibility has been the key. I just went along with the flow—doing hybrid, synchronous, asynchronous, and virtual only on some days and face-to-face on most days with a limited crew of students. Our tech knowledge and resources available and learning “how-to” was most challenging.

Keszler: It was rather easy since I teach music, and 90% of my students came back to school when we started. We jumped right in, and it was truly like we had never had a break. My fifth graders were excited to play their recorders and to learn the world of instrument playing. The other grade levels (K-4) fell back into the saddle, and we began to learn just as we did before.

Morrow: I focused on the behind-the-scenes activities associated with the pandemic. Our district has a great staff with a lot of intellectual strength. These individuals developed a collaborative partnership with all our key teaching staff stakeholders. Together, this team enhanced our bandwidth for streaming videos, identified what we needed to do to enhance our current virtual teaching platform, developed a template on how to use the enhanced features of this system, and then deployed the system to our entire teaching staff. The teachers in turn developed their lesson plans and never missed a beat on teaching their students, at first virtually and then a hybrid of in-person and virtual classes. Because we are a 1-1 district (students are issued Chromebooks), we were able to transition from face-to-face to virtual and then to a hybrid of virtual learning and face-to-face learning with few issues.

Zambrano: I am blessed to be in a school district that believes students must meet the future demands of society in the real world by being 21st-century learners. We were already a Google-centered district. We had already transformed most classrooms to be student centered by integrating technology. In my case, I already had a 2-1 Chromebook ratio. My students already had online access to coursework before the pandemic. This is not to say the transition was flawless; this just meant we had the means. We were able to get all students technology and online hot spots through some corporate and community help. Weslaco was resourceful with foresight, so kudos to our administrators; however, do not forget our technology personnel who made our dreams come true. Otherwise, it could have been a nightmare. After the initial lockdown in March 2020, we had much time to reflect and prepare for the fall semester over the summer, but a lockdown eventually became the least of our problems. I survived because I have a loving family who supported me at all turns. In many cases, I had to spend more time with my students than my family—up until 9:59 p.m. on Zoom tutoring, which also included Saturdays, and all they could do was ask, “Dad, can I help you with anything?”

What’s one thing you will remember about this year?

Dinbali: Wearing masks (even though they save lives and we are protecting each other, I don’t have to like them); not being able to travel; not being able to see the people we love. We take normal things for granted!

Evans: How the pandemic highlighted the importance of public educators. It emphasized how much work we put into educating our students, why educators are essential, and that no matter what, educators will find a way to care and to educate.

Keszler: I think the one thing I will never forget is “the year of the mask.” I truly hope this is a thing of the past. My students have been so resilient in wearing them daily—and with little reminder. They do not seem to mind it as much as the adults around them (myself included) do. I truly think they are just excited to be at school with their friends and teachers. My students love to learn, and it has been amazing to watch them conquer this year like no other.

Morrow: I will always remember that I have the privilege and honor to work with the most incredible, selfless public servants—teachers. They invested all they had into their students to make sure they were given a lesson that was of high quality and well planned, met all of the state’s TEKS elements, and kept the students engaged in the learning process. They even went the extra mile to have after-school virtual tutoring lessons, during personal time, without compensation.

What’s one thing you want people to know?

Dinbali: Teaching both online students and on-campus students is hard, but then trying to do labs with them is even harder because of the different ways it has to be taught. At the same time, you’re still doing everything that is required of you by administration and TEA. Also, being a sponsor for a few organizations is super hard, especially when you’re trying to make everything as normal as possible for your students, including our senior rites of passage like prom, graduation, and other fun events they normally would attend.

Hoey: If people thought that teachers were jugglers before, this year we excelled in the juggle and the hats that we wear!

Keszler: This year has taught me many things in the world of education; however, the most important is that our kids are amazing, and they are my superheroes. They have taken the hand we were all dealt and worked through them with little complaint. From kindergarten to fifth grade, they have all put their masks on, set aside their fears, and come to school. When they get out of the car each morning, they want to be here and are eager to learn. It warms my heart to hear them say, “I’m so glad I got to come to school today!”

Morrow: I am happy I work in a district that does not overthink or complicate its staff’s ability to overcome obstacles placed at their feet. Instead of complicating things, leadership set the framework for success by investing in its people’s talents, skills, and attributes. As a result of this forward thinking, the district and its staff were able to maintain a less than 1% positivity rate for COVID-19 in our staff and students during the entire pandemic. When you work together as one team with one mission, you can accomplish the impossible. This school year, we thermal-scanned approximately 10,000 students, visitors, and staff a day at all of our campuses. As a result, the thermal cameras flagged approximately five students, staff, and visitors a day for further inquiry.

Zambrano: We live in a world of entropy and nothing can stop that. We have no clue to what to expect in the future as teachers put their nose to the grindstone and move forward. The only thing people need to know is that regardless of the situations, we teachers are here for your child.

THE PANDEMIC PRESENTED UNIQUE CHALLENGES FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS.

How did you handle the challenges of this year?

Susie Andrews, Raymondville ISD teacher for students with visual impairments: I had to get creative in finding ways to work with my students. Fortunately, I found many resources to help me out. I joined meetings with our regional TVI [teacher of the visually impaired] network and the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to find resources and listen to conversations with other TVIs around the state. We all shared what was working and what wasn’t, and we brainstormed ideas to help each other. I learned about so many resources that were available online. These resources were such valuable tools to help educate our students with visual impairments.

Gidget Belinoski-Bailey, Willis ISD educational diagnostician: Roll with the punches. This has been the best way to deal with the challenges we have faced this year. I think, like most educators, I had to resign myself to the fact that everyone, including our leaders, were making the best decisions they could with the information they had. So, you do what is asked of you and try your best to do the best job possible!

Lindsay Higginbotham, Leander ISD early childhood special education teacher: Some of the challenges I faced this year with my students included trying to create virtual instruction that kept them engaged and challenged. The young age of my students presented the challenge of being able to provide instruction that was engaging and developmentally appropriate for them while having only a short amount of time with them online. Once we returned in person, I was faced with challenges of being able to continue to create a safe, fun, and loving environment in my classroom with the addition of new and unique COVID-19 protocols.

What has this year been like for you?

Andrews: This year, only two of my students have been attending school “in person.” The rest of my caseload has been learning virtually or via packets sent home. One of the challenges I had was trying to work virtually with students who have multiple disabilities, including being legally blind. These are students who often need 1-1 assistance and hand-under-hand instruction, which is hard to do virtually. I tried to create activities parents could complete with their children and hopefully enrich their daily lives. I also had some students who had difficulty accessing the internet or had difficulty figuring out how to access computer programs such as Zoom or Google Classroom on their own due to their visual impairments. In the end, we figured out what worked best for each individual student. This year, I was able to work on reading and writing Braille with my two academic Braille students via Zoom and FaceTime; however, I have not been able to work on their technology skills because it does require a lot of hands-on instruction. I have also done a lot of driving back and forth to my students’ homes to deliver packets or Braille materials. I have even worked on cooking activities with some of my students this year. I translated their recipes into Braille, bought the ingredients, and delivered them to their homes, and then we would complete the recipe via Zoom. It has been a busy year full of learning (for both my students and myself) and even a little bit of fun!

Belinoski-Bailey: This year has been filled with additional documentation related to COVID-19. Every schedule of service must now include a remote plan in the event school closes again. Evaluations look completely different. We are wearing masks, separated by plexiglass, and sanitizing all materials after each use. The biggest change for me has been ARD (admission, review, and dismissal) meetings. All of these are being held virtually, which has ended up being a blessing. Parents are not forced to take off work to attend meetings, and staff can attend no matter where they are. So, virtual ARDs have resulted in better attendance, which saves time.

Higginbotham: This year has been challenging and has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone at times. Learning new technology, different ways to teach, and new protocols has pushed me to be even more flexible in my teaching in the classroom.

What’s one thing you will remember about this year?

Andrews: I will remember how much I missed working with my kids in person and socializing with my co-workers.

Belinoski-Bailey: There is not just one thing. I will remember this year as the one that created change! The way that the “school business” is carried out has changed. Everyone can now have access to school each and every day, whether virtually or attending in person. There is no reason you should not be engaged. Change makes you examine your practices, and hopefully the changes made are for the better!

Higginbotham: I think the biggest thing I will remember is the time we all spent at home or the time doing digital learning from home. Knowing that I was still able to make connections with my students during digital learning is something I will remember.

What’s one thing you want people to know?

Andrews: Teachers are so strong and resilient. Keep the faith, remember to help each other, and always remember that you make a difference.

Belinoski-Bailey: As educators, we are doing our best. Mistakes have been made, and many more will be made. But we are here to serve children and are doing everything we can to make school as “normal” as possible and to foster a love of learning!

Higginbotham: How hard teachers have been working this year, both in person and virtually. Teachers have had to learn new digital platforms and new ways to teach all in a matter of days and weeks. It’s still stressful and exhausting, but we do it because we love teaching and our students. 

You can read our previous interviews with these educators in the Summer 2020 and Fall 2020 issues of ATPE News. Read about Ty Morrow and Brazosport ISD’s thermal safety protocols at http://bit.ly/thermal-safety. Read about how Joe Zambrano turned his garage into a classroom at http://bit.ly/garage-lab.