Teacher Turnabout: New core teachers at semester is one more challenge students face in remote learning

It’s your first day back at hybrid learning next semester, you walk into your new AP U.S. History classroom — with a teacher you don’t know — and they’re diving into WWI while your class was still learning about the Gilded Age last semester. You haven’t even finished your first day and you’re already a whole unit behind your classmates. 

As if learning remotely wasn’t hard enough, we now stumble into second semester where about 90% of students, according to Associate Principal Britton Haney, have new core class teachers — damaging the already limited amount of connections students have in a virtual academic setting.

Yes, it’s typical for scheduling conflicts to occur in normal school years when a student switches hours during the semester, but with the limited numbers of hybrid classes and remote classes, the problem has become more prevalent when schedules are being put together. Why? To compensate for students’ desired electives. Electives already have limited time slots — something had to give: their teachers.

A student’s academic success relies on that teacher-student bond — a bond that isn’t built over one math unit but develops throughout the year. It’s even harder to get to know a teacher via Webex, so switching things up just as we get comfortable washes away the minimal amounts of consistency students and teachers have going for them.

Forming a relationship with teachers is one of the most essential keys to academic performance. According to edweek.org and a Review of Educational Research’s analysis on 46 studies, the students who have stronger relationships with their teachers tend to have better grades, attendance, participation and fewer disruptions. And even when they added other external factors, such as family background, into the equation, these relationships were still the main difference in success. 

With second semester’s incoming changes, instead of continuing to build on these crucial relationships in-person finally, students have to hit the reset button.

While the counselors are doing everything they can to solve this scheduling Rubik’s Cube and avoid changing students’ teachers as much as possible, the struggle of students and teachers connecting is still neglected, making these switches the latest academic sinkhole for students.

Adjusting to a new teacher and teaching style isn’t as easy as it sounds — especially with a three-day turnaround after finals. If the school wants to see our virtual-school-infested grades improve, they need to dig at the deeper roots — communication.

The school continues to express through emails and announcements that they aren’t naive of the challenges that come with online learning, but actions speak louder than emails. Other than encouraging teachers of the same core class to work at an equal pace on the curriculum, nothing else has been done to alleviate the situation. 

And it’s not just students affected by these schedule switch-ups. Teachers can spend weeks learning the names of around 150 students on a yearly basis. Now, they lose half their students and have to learn the names of a whole new group. Students are already barely able to have one-on-one conversations with their teachers, and now, they have to restart the process with part of their class.

Plus, taking on a new teacher makes it harder to catch up when using different teaching methods, not to mention trying to navigate their foreign Canvas page — stressful problems virtually or in-person. At this point in online school, it’s not just about a new teacher, but the difference in teaching methods that come with them. We organize our lives around a teacher’s planning methods of grading and lecturing in a class, and when that routine is flipped, we have to adapt to closed-note tests over open-book, or five homework assignments a week instead of three.

The truth is that adapted schedules become one more adjustment to our academic lives that us students have to cope with — and it’s not like we get a two-week winter break to gear-up for the new transition.

And to make it worse, students weren’t made aware if they were switching teachers. Schedules were released with less than two weeks left with no forewarning or reason of the alteration, adding to the worry that comes with the switch to hybrid. With the little time students have to digest this, administrators need to make sure they’re providing safe and open-armed resources to help them if the transition becomes a greater struggle than anticipated.

Though teachers have as little say in these changes as students, they still need to assist in making this transition easier. If they haven’t already, they should discuss with their fellow core-class teachers on how they’ve taught during the hybrid and remote learning phases. Students will need teachers’ help and understanding of their situation to make sure they learn the expectations and workflow of the class so they’re not stuck on a Pre-Calc assignment because they don’t know the teacher’s code to DeltaMath.

If teachers can promise us the empathy of making an effort, we promise to be extra patient as they learn how to pronounce our names — we might even ignore when they confuse us with our peer who looks a little bit similar through a Webex box.

Now is when we need to support students — and teachers — to help them make the adjustment easier so they can worry about bigger things than their first impression with their new chemistry teacher.