Educator spotlight: Cascade Locks media specialist finds ways to connect with students despite distance learning

Holloway works with a range of students, from kindergarteners to fifth graders. As media specialist, she teaches both library and technology classes. In ordinary years, she has kids in front of her in the library. However, in the 2020-2021 school year, that wasn’t the case.

For most of the 2020-2021 school year, the school district was exclusively doing comprehensive distance learning, also known as CDL. This meant that everything was online.

As someone who teaches technology classes, Holloway was in no way unfamiliar with computers and their programs. Although now, they were no longer exclusive to her tech classes. She found herself having to teach kindergarteners how to use technology — over technology.

One of the most difficult things was navigating technological issues, Holloway said.

“How do you tell a 5 year old to turn their technology off and on again,to try resetting?” she said. “They don’t know, especially when you’re talking to them through the technology that’s messing up. That’s hard.”

Another problem with younger students was getting them to switch classes on Google Meets, Holloway said.

“In person, the teacher just walks them from class to class,” she said. “But when they were scrambling to find the links and get where they needed to go, it felt like we lost a lot of time that they could be learning.”

CDL wasn’t all bad, though. Holloway said she was still able to spend lots of time with the kids, especially because she had lots to do and help out with.

“I still got to see the whole school which was amazing,” she said.

Even so, Holloway has been so glad to be back in-person, she said. It has been rewarding in a lot of ways, though she admits there have been some challenges.

One of the big things is that students have struggled with their interpersonal skills since coming back, Holloway said.

“We’re having to reteach the expectations and the classroom behavior because they missed that little piece,” she said. “And I also think for the social piece ... that’s a little bit harder for them coming back after the pandemic. It’s harder for them socially. They’re having to relearn those friendship skills.”

Holloway said she’s also noticed that students seem to have a harder time maintaining their patience and attention spans as compared to before CDL. She said it makes sense that students are struggling to sit still for long periods of time, considering how long they had the flexibility of being at home.

“Eighteen months is a long time to go without the structure of school,” she said. “Then to have to come into the school and be able to sit in a chair for hours at a time, well, it’s much harder.”

There have been shifts in the way things have been approached since returning, Holloway said. During library class, she has to ensure only a few kids are in each section at a time. She said that this has actually led to students picking out books they wouldn’t regularly, resulting in them finding new favorites.

“I’ve had students find things like the old Hardy Boy books or the Boxcar Children and just absolutely fall in love,” she said. “And that is just so cool.”

Despite the challenges this year has brought, Holloway said the positives of having the kids back in class are more than worth it. Helping them discover new books is definitely a part of that, but the most important thing for her is really being able to connect with the students.

“Before I liked having the kids in school, but now it’s like, this is a real pleasure to have them here and be able to have hands-on learning,” Holloway said. “To be able to personally help them with a little task like writing a letter or their numbers and being able to talk to them individually … it’s just one of those things you might’ve taken for granted before that is just everything now.”