What will teachers focus on as Miami schools reopen? Kids in classrooms will see change
When Teresa Murphy walked into Spanish Lake Elementary for the first time in more than a year, it was like she “was back home.”
“I love what I do,” Murphy said. “And I don’t think I realized that I still love what I do, as much as I did Day One, until last year.”
The 2022 Francisco R. Walker Teacher of the Year hadn’t seen the Northwest Miami-Dade school’s corridors — which now have a Star Wars-themed “Yoda Best Students” bulletin board near the office — or her classroom since Miami-Dade County Public Schools abruptly moved classes online at the start of the pandemic back in March 2020.
When some students and teachers returned to in-person learning, Murphy stayed online, using Snapchat filters and Zoom backgrounds during class to hide her cancer treatment.
Now, as she enters her 29th year of teaching with Monday’s start of school in Miami-Dade, the 50-year-old Murphy is preparing to have students in the classroom again. But she knows it will be different.
COVID-19 protocols. Children who lost family to the disease. Kids, who just like her, haven’t stepped foot inside a classroom in 17 months.
Murphy is also her school’s “Mindfulness Champion,” part of the district’s new initiative, done in partnership with the Miami Heat, Florida Blue, and Mindful Kids Miami, to help support the mental health of students and employees. She took training on breathing techniques and other calming lessons to share with the rest of the school. “Mindfulness” is also her classroom theme this year.
“Inhale. Exhale.” “Be a voice not an echo,” and other similar posters line her classroom walls. On the first day of class, her third-grade students will find inspirational words on their desk and a special message on the board.
It’s the first step in helping her students focus on the positive aspects of their lives as they begin the 2021-2022 school year, she said.
“I need delta to leave, exit stage one,” Murphy said.
Mental health is on the mind of other teachers, too. So is addressing pandemic learning loss and helping students feel connected with each other while following social distancing guidelines.
“How can I meet my learners, as far as what they need academically, but also emotionally, because they have gone through so much this past year,” said Lidys Toro, who teaches fourth- and fifth-grade students at Kensington Park Elementary in Little Havana.
Many of the parents at her school are essential workers, Toro said. Others are nurses at hospitals. Some students might have a parent who lost their job during the pandemic. This all gives students different levels of stress, and some might be more scared of COVID exposure than others.
For Toro, who is entering her 12th year of teaching, this means making sure her students feel safe and welcomed in her classroom.
On the first day of school, students will be given goody bags filled with toys and school supplies to help motivate them for the new year. The 34-year-old said she spent $500 of her own money and collected donations from friends, family and two local businesses — the Law Offices of Harold Caicedo and Nomad Fishing Charters — to make the treat possible. It’s a similar strategy to what she did last year when classes abruptly went online to show students she had “their back no matter what.”
‘Looking at technology that can enhance the classroom experience’
Stephanie Woolley-Larrea, an English teacher at Coral Reef Senior High in Southwest Miami-Dade with more than 20 years of experience, taught in-person and fully online classes last year. The 48-year-old is also planning to incorporate some of the lessons she’s learned during the pandemic into her teaching.
“Last year we were looking at technology that could replace the classroom experience, “ Woolley-Larrea said. “And I think this year, we’re going to be looking at technology that can enhance the classroom experience.”
One of the digital tools she plans to use again is a Google website she created to post vocabulary lists, lessons and other useful information. Other educators have said they’re planning to use online parent-teacher conferences and apps like ClassDojo and Remind again.
However, technology can’t replicate some things, like spontaneous “teachable moments,” she said.
“The best moments that happen in your classroom are the ones that kind of come out of what’s going on around you — and the conversations — and somebody asks the question” that leads to an engaging discussion, or what Woolley-Larrea’s students like to call her “mom moments.”
And as the first day of the new school year nears — it starts on Aug. 23 for Miami-Dade public schools — teachers are busy preparing their classrooms for socially distanced learning. They’re excited, but also nervous as Florida continues to see a rise in COVID cases and hospitalizations.
Woolley-Larrea doesn’t plan to walk around the classroom like she usually does when teaching to maximize social distancing. Toro will be setting an hourly alarm on her phone to make sure her kids wash their hands frequently. And Murphy, who had her own bout with COVID, is figuring out how she can arrange small groups safely.
COVID ‘sealed the deal for me,’ retiring teacher says
For teachers like 65-year-old Joan Sharperson, a veteran educator with 30 years of experience, the COVID risk was too high, especially because kids under 12 can’t get vaccinated yet. The 2008 Teacher of the Year for Miami-Dade County wasn’t planning to retire for a few more years, but then she was hospitalized twice for COVID-19. At one point, she ended up in the ICU.
“COVID just kind of more or less sealed the deal for me,” Sharperson said. “It was a very difficult decision to make because I don’t think of teaching as just a profession, I feel that its my calling.”
The Spanish Lake Elementary fifth-grade teacher returned to school to finish the year and officially retired in June. She never thought her last year would end the way it did, with her teaching inside an empty classroom to a computer screen of virtual students in Brady Bunch-style squares.
She used educational games like Kahoot! to start the day with multiple-choice quizzes. Zoom “breakout rooms” to imitate group work and one-on-one teaching. She drove to the homes of students who met their iReady goal to give them gift cards in a drive-through celebration.
It was a year of thinking “outside the box,” she said.
Now, instead of decorating her classroom or prepping lesson plans, Sharperson is adapting to retired life. She hopes to volunteer at school and become a private tutor once she feels it’s safe enough.
“My heart goes out to the educators that are out here that are now going into their classrooms and preparing for the school year ... because I shudder to think what the school year is going to be like,” Sharperson said.
Teachers say they plan to make the best of the situation for their students.
“If I can teach the same message that I have taught since long before this, which is for them to value their education. This is not about a grade, this is not about a standardized test,” said Murphy, the teacher of the year.
“Those gauge where we need to go, those give accountability and they’re useful. But the bottom line is, if we don’t teach children to value their education and their knowledge, then we’ve lost.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 10:56 AM.
