David Lavallee

(URI photo by Nora Lewis)

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Noah Daniels uses a whiteboard to teach his class during a mild day in fall 2020 during the height of the pandemic

(URI photo by Nora Lewis)

Adrianna J. Cafarella, of Little Compton, who earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing, summa cum laude in May 2021, flashes the thumbs up sign while working at Newport Hospital during the pandemic as a certified nursing assistant.

(Submitted photo)

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There’s no masking shortfalls of teaching in these times

By TIMOTHY KENNEY

Lisa, a science teacher for 20 years, walks into her school about one hour before her school day actually begins, still wearing two masks. Walking through the halls, she waves to masked colleagues who are also hurrying along to their own classrooms with little time to talk. She seldom interacts with her colleagues, much different than before COVID-19. She misses those interactions as they always provided a laugh, or a chance to share ideas, or a time to build collegiality. Things are different now. Teachers for various reasons remain in their rooms much more, isolated from each other.

As she flips on the light to her classroom, she immediately notices that the wastebaskets have not been emptied from the day before. She sighs but knows the reason is a number of custodians were sick the day before due to COVID. After taking the wastebaskets out and emptying them in the dumpster, she returns and assumes that since the wastebaskets were not emptied, the desks have probably not been wiped down as well. So, she grabs the Lysol wipes brought from home and takes 10 minutes to wipe down the desks. Already she can feel her anxiety building as the time she planned on organizing for the day slips away.

Once behind her desk, she checks her district website for the names on the “Be in the Know” list: the list of students quarantining due to health reasons. Lisa checks to see if the names on the list match those of the students from any of her classes. She sees that a number are from her classes, which means that she now needs to teach students in person and at home simultaneously by live-streaming her class. She groans. This was the day her students were to do one of her favorite labs of the year. She quickly reimagines how to have those students at home participate as much as possible. She planned on presenting the lab using PowerPoint, but now wonders how effective the presentation will be while live streaming and monitoring students at home on her single laptop. She modifies her lesson and sets up the technology to best teach students at home and at school. She realizes the only way she can teach both groups effectively is by remaining at her desk, limiting her ability to interact with the students who are the classroom. Lisa quickly discards the creative aspect of the lesson always enjoyed by her students to meet the practical needs of this hybrid classroom.

Next, she scours through her emails, trying to answer questions from parents who wonder about new guidelines and from the students who were out the day before asking “What did I miss?”, even though she spent hours the night before posting everything on Google Classroom. Frustrated, she responds to each student and each parent with needed grace and compassion. Seeing she has a few minutes left, she examines the binder given to her about the new curriculum the state mandated this year, which will be discussed at her department meeting at the end of the day, rather than student work. The feedback for her students will wait until her planning period.

The bell rings and masked students enter the classroom. She welcomes them as usual. All enter looking down on their cell phones. Only a few say hello back. As she watches them enter, she can already see there are more students absent than the ones on the list. She glances at her email, watching the emails appear from students telling her that they won’t be in and if she can share the Google Meet with them. District policy is that only students on the list should be hybrid, but Lisa does not want to see any of her students fall behind, so she sends the link to them. Just as she is about to begin, the phone rings. Without picking up, Lisa knows the office is calling to ask if she can cover a class during her planning period again. She agrees, knowing she will not be able to give feedback to students. After all, she thinks, we are all in this together.

She looks up, tells her students to put their phones away and watches icons rather than student faces appear on screen. Here, at the midpoint of the year, she still wonders if she will ever recognize these students when they are not wearing masks. She longs for those times when she knew their faces- and she knew them. The same thought runs through her head as it does now every day, and with more frequency: “How much longer can I do this?”

She takes a moment to reach deep within to find the passion for teaching so that she can compensate once again for the realities of COVID:

“Good morning everyone! Let’s get started.”

Timothy Kenney is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Rhode Island’s School of Education. To write this story he interviewed two teachers, both with the first name of Lisa. He purposely omitted last names.

Yes, we’re still wearing masks indoors at the  University of Rhode Island, still running asymptomatic and symptomatic testing operations and vaccination clinics. Many people are physically and emotionally exhausted from two years of dealing with the pandemic.

But if you look inside our dining halls (where students can take their masks off while eating), or see them walking outdoors without masks, you’ll see smiles and hear laughter. In our classrooms, you will see and hear animated discussions among faculty and students.

Thanks to our masking, vaccination and booster mandates (95 percent of our students, faculty and staff were fully vaccinated by the end of the fall semester), we have been fortunate to see very low COVID-19 transmission rates throughout the pandemic, including the past semester. Our testing positivity rate remained below 2% and often was below 1% for several consecutive weeks, except during the arrival of the Omicron variant in mid-December. Since the beginning of the pandemic, URI Health Services has conducted 215,253 COVID-19 tests, and processed 19,000 immunization records for COVID-19 vaccinations and exemptions for faculty, staff and students.

Getting to this point required nearly everyone at the University--students, faculty, staff and administrators to work nights, weekends and holidays, often at the expense of time with families and much needed vacation.

The story began early in 2020 when University health officials started  monitoring a strange new virus developing in China.  Members of a University team working to get seven students safely home from China in late January 2020 didn’t know it at the time, but they were building a collaborative model that continues to serve the University well.  Starting Jan. 29, 2020, the team gathered in the University’s Emergency Operations Center to get those first students back to the United States, and later the remaining study-abroad students safely home.

During those hectic early days, staff called students a world away, reassured parents, helped book flights, answered questions about how study-abroad students could continue their academic progress when they returned, issued frequent communications to the community and media, and dealt with technology issues.

As the pandemic worsened and difficult decisions arose, that collaborative model was key to converting 3,000 in-person classes online during the spring 2020 semester and preparing classrooms with the latest technology for remote and hybrid learning the following fall.

An unprecedented crisis

In its more than 130-year history, the University has mourned its war dead, survived the Great Depression, been a part of the civil rights movement, and participated in protests against wars, gun violence, discrimination and intolerance.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in the deaths of over 886,000 people in the United States, and over 3,316 in Rhode Island, may have tested the University’s resolve like nothing else. An unprecedented level of teamwork and round-the-clock efforts allowed the University to return to an in-person experience, augmented by remote learning, in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, and a full return to in-person classes and activities this past fall.  As widespread vaccination began and the University continued to keep the virus at bay, it held  in-person commencement ceremonies for its 2021 graduates at Meade Stadium last May. Nine separate joyful ceremonies for each of its academic colleges and the graduate school were celebrated.

As promised, the Class of 2020, which was unable to have in-person ceremonies that spring, had its own in-person commencement in the Ryan Center on Oct. 1, 2021.

The 2021 and 2020 commencements, held just months apart, represented huge wins for URI, but the University can also celebrate its service to people around the state, the nation and the world.

Faculty, staff, and students made plastic face shields; staffed a field hospital, testing and vaccination sites (including those at URI); developed URI’s own hand sanitizer; delivered meals to needy seniors; sewed face coverings, and created a just-in-time manufacturing center to convert sleep apnea machines into supplementary breathing machines. Students collected personal protective equipment for health care workers, kept the campus informed on the latest developments, and cared for each other.

Two years into the pandemic, URI is still battling to stay ahead of this virus. But we finished a successful fall semester, during which students excelled in classrooms and laboratories and a nearly normal campus experience. We open the spring semester with a bustling campus, students and faculty back refreshed from winter break and activities in full swing.

In his benison to the Class of 2020, President Marc Parlange used some inspirational quotes from “Chariots of Fire,” which still ring true today. In the movie, one athlete is almost paralyzed by fear and victimized by anti-Semitism, and the other draws on his faith to face his challenges.

“Who among you has not faced down fear during this tumultuous time of pandemic, civil and political unrest, academic and social challenges during periods of isolation and remote learning?” Parlange said. “And yet, you were not and are not afraid to win, to succeed and to successfully complete your academic quest. And where did that strength come from? It came from within all of you, bolstered by the love of your family and friends. When you had doubts, you strengthened your effort, when you couldn’t envision a finish line, you retained your faith. And in the end, you were victorious.”

As we complete our first month of the spring semester, we promise to our entire community and the State of Rhode Island, that we will continue to be models of teamwork, innovation and grit as we fight for victory.

Dave Lavallee is URI Assistant Director of Communications and COVID-19 Public Information Officer

Editor’s note: In planning stories to accompany this section, Beacon Communications posed the question “how has the pandemic” affected the operation of higher education and teachers. URI responded and offered these perspectives. We extend our gratitude to Dave Lavallee, URI Assistant Director of Communications Department of Marketing and Communications who coordinated this project.