For most of the school year, a majority of teachers struggled with the hybrid learning situation. Now, however, since cohorts have been eliminated, students are mostly in person. Teachers are finding new struggles and joys.

Since the majority of the class is now in person, teachers admit to forgetting about their students on Zoom. “I might ignore them, because I won’t think about it, whereas before it was really obvious…there were seven kids sitting in the class [so it was easy] to remember to call on the people virtually; [now] I would just feel bad, ‘Oh my God! I ignored this human,’” math teacher Mr. John Groess said. 

Science teacher Ms. Abbi Baker was not a huge fan of cohorts. Since her class does labs and is more of a hands-on course, Baker says that her students now enjoy having more space to work. “I have labs; I want to give them a hands-on experience, but also an opportunity for the people at home,” Baker said.

Over the past school year teachers have taught in online school and hybrid, and now cohorts are nonexistent, but there is still an option for students to  be online. All this change and focus on technology means that teachers, like math teacher Mr. Bruce Becker, are improving their technical skills. “I have done some of the best work in my career in the last nine to seven months,” Becker said.

Becker believes it’s easier when everyone is in his class. It was hard for him to split lessons and make sure he focused both on Zoom and students in front of him. Cohorts can be hard for teachers, especially with lessons going on and making sure that everyone is paying attention. “[Student] attention was sort of split,” Becker said.

Band teacher Mr. Keefe is very excited about bringing the whole band back together. It was very difficult for the band to play online, so they used a program called SmartMusic to record themselves instead of overwhelming the speakers. “[Band is an] in person game,” Keefe said. 

Teachers like this new look on returning back to normal, but they also want to make sure that it’s safe and that students follow the rules and protocols.  “I hope we can stay safe while we do this, so far so good. I hope we continue to stick with the strategies that Dr. [Susan] Skinner talks about,” Groess said.

With almost all of the student body back, there are a lot of loud voices and students talking in the hallway. “I am excited; there is a different energy,” Groess said.