With schools closed, Wichita teachers are finding new ways to connect with kids
What does a teacher do when she can’t gather students in a classroom after spring break?
She makes lots and lots of phone calls. And feels sad.
“I called all my students last week just to check in with them and make sure they knew I was still thinking about them,” said Trina Parker, a fifth-grade teacher at Woodland Elementary School in Wichita.
“I’m sad that I’m not going to be able to see them for the rest of the school year. I’m sad that all of the exciting end-of-the-year things we had planned aren’t going to happen.”
Kansas school buildings are closed for the rest of the academic year, following an order by Gov. Laura Kelly in response to concerns about the coronavirus.
But teachers are returning to work this week to plan how to keep students learning over the final nine weeks of the year. Some returned to buildings Tuesday to fetch laptops and other belongings, staggering their trips to meet social distancing guidelines.
One of my teacher friends posted a picture of her empty classroom on Facebook — a birthday greeting from her students still hanging on the wall — and called the mission “seven kinds of awful.”
“I did not expect physically being at school to affect me as strongly as it did,” another teacher commented. “Definitely tears in the car afterwards.”
Most of the early talk around school closures has focused on panicked parents suddenly in charge of their children’s education, wondering how they’ll juggle work, child care and teaching responsibilities.
But teachers missing their students and school families are finding innovative ways to connect and let them know they care.
On Monday, teachers at Woodland drove their cars in a parade around the school’s north Riverside neighborhood, waving and shouting greetings to students and families. The school’s wolf mascot rode in the bed of a pickup that had “Keep reading” written on the window.
“That was really great, to be able to see some of our students’ faces and be able to reach out to them and yet keep our 6 feet of social distancing,” Parker said.
Patricia Brown, principal at Woodland, said staff members are reaching out in different ways, through personal phone calls, cards, emails and messages on social media.
The fences around many Wichita school playgrounds display plastic-cup messages to students and the surrounding community. A sign outside Riverside Leadership Magnet Elementary proclaims, “Our building may be closed, but we know our leaders will rise to the challenge!”
“Education is just such a relational field, and that compassion that our staff feels for our kids, it’s hard to do that in front of a screen,” Brown said.
“That personal connection, I think, is what everyone is longing for right now.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 5:03 PM.
