By Bill Fonda
In the summer of 2020, Mason Elementary School Superintendent/Principal Kristen Kivela was trying to come up with a plan to bring students back to school that fall, with some help from fifth-grade teacher Alexcina Leel.
“We just spent the whole summer brainstorming, ‘How do we make this work?’” Kivela said.
Together, they came up with the hybrid model the school introduced when the first students, in kindergarten and first grade, came back that October. Students in second and third grade returned that November, and fourth and fifth grade right before Christmas.
They returned to a hybrid model where they were in school two days a week and remote the other three. The school used a team-teaching model where kindergarten and first grade teachers were together, as were second and third and fourth and fifth grades.
One would teach a subject to students in the classroom while the other taught a different class to students at home, and then they would switch.
“Every kid was getting the same amount of instruction during the day from teachers,” Kivela said. “We weren’t losing instructional time. We were just giving it a different way.”
According to first-grade teacher Karen Mann, “As a teacher, anything would have been better than teaching remote.”
The school closed down in March 2020, and students were sent home with Chromebooks and packets, which parents would exchange for new ones.
“It was very much parent-driven instruction,” Kivela said. “At that point, it was ‘Get through it.’”
Mann said the experience wasn’t as horrific as in other places because of involved and supportive parents, but there were problems such as teaching reading, explaining that the whole premise is putting sounds together, and of 14 or 15 screens, half could not hear.
“It was hard to discern who was getting it and who wasn’t getting it,” she said.
Now that all the students are back, Mann said academics have been stable, except for struggling students, but there is more insecurity if schedules change or if someone is absent.
“Everybody has kind of had to reassure each other that everything’s going to be OK,” she said. “There’s just kind of increased anxiousness.”
Mann’s class starts with a class meeting, usually with some kind of personal question.
“A lot of the anxiety comes out during that time,” she said. “It kind of gives us a chance to get that kind of stuff out.”
Mitigation measures
The school has gone back and forth on mask mandates before lifting them in early March. Originally, the school required masks if 10 students caught COVID, but with approximately 80 students in the school, that was too many, so it was cut to one.
Students had to stay 6 feet apart in every grade except first, where the requirement was 3 feet. If students were 6 feet apart, they did not have to wear masks.
Students are still eating lunch in their classrooms because social distancing is not possible, but Kivela said she hopes the cafeteria will be back in use this spring.
One adjustment Mann had to make was using desks, because in more than 20 years of teaching, she had never had them. However, she said the students were great about sitting in their desks. They were also great about masks.
“Young kids, they will rise to whatever you ask them to do,” she said. “They want to please, and they want to be happy in school.”
It wasn’t just Mann’s class that needed to add desks when students were forced to sit in socially distanced rows.
“I had to waste so much money on desks,” Kivela said. “Now I don’t know what I’m going to do with the desks.”
The school also got tests from the state, meaning it could test students right there instead of having to wait for parents to take them to the doctor.
“That was a game-changer,” Kivela said.
Kivela and Mann agreed that the vibe was different once the mask mandate was lifted.
“They’re so much happier. You can see their little faces and their little smiles,” Mann said, adding that it is also easier to hear children talk.
Kivela said the staff is almost 100% vaccinated, and between the number of students who were vaccinated or had COVID, immunity levels are high.
“I think we’re in a good place,” she said.
Kivela said she learned the importance of having the trust of the community, parents and staff, and said she told parents and staff that she would not have wanted to go through a pandemic anywhere else.
“The parents may not have liked it, but they were willing to do it,” she said. “They were completely on our side. They trusted our recommendations, and they were behind us 100%.”
Posted March 29, 2022
Bill Fonda 