| Herald-Journal
When classes resumed at Cedar Springs Academy in August, teachers were cleaning and disinfecting their rooms, as well as other teachers across the country, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The academy, located on the campus of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, in Spartanburg, serves students with visual or hearing impairments with at least one other physical or intellectual disability.
Susan Mitchell, who teaches from kindergarten through third grade at the academy, has a class of four students. She said teachers are used to cleaning, but are now cleaning more because of the pandemic.
“We cleaned it before, but now we clean it several times a day,” said Mitchell. “We have certain protocols for cleaning tables and things that are played most often.”
Mitchell has been teaching his students in person, five days a week, since they returned in August. Their classroom has changed in the same way as other classrooms – their students wear masks, they sit at tables protected by plexiglass spaced 2 meters apart, and they all have their own box of work materials that they cannot share.
Mitchell said that she and her assistant need to sanitize all the reusable materials in the class. And since many of his students need individual assistance, often through practical instructions, Mitchell must also be very aware of not transmitting germs among students.
“When I go from student to student, I have to plan my classes, so that I have time to move from student to student and wash my hands between them. I still rotate (among students), but it is more planned for me to work with a student; my assistant works with a student and then we hang up for longer periods of time, rather than shorter periods, ”said Mitchell.
In addition to using personal protective equipment and increasing cleanliness, teachers are also using technology to help them in the classroom.
“We have an FM system and speakers for the iPads so that students can hear their lessons better,” said Mitchell. “I have a microphone attached to me so I don’t have to speak so loudly, and it picks up my voice more clearly than if they heard it from a distance under my mask.”
Statewide learning
When SCSDB was informed that all children would need to return home last March, teachers started working to prepare paper packages for each student. The school’s Director of Educational Services, Jolene Madison, said they would like students to have materials with which they were already familiar with to work while away from school.
“We felt strongly that our students needed to use resources with which they were familiar,” said Madison. “We run our buses and take our materials to all parts of the state as well as children’s technology”.
Teachers also had to instruct families on the methods used to support students so that they could help their children with homework. Some of these activities involved manual instruction, in which a teacher physically guides the student during the performance of a task. This was often done through videoconferences, but with students living across the state, there was no one-size-fits-all solution.
“Many families are in some rural areas where they did not have a cell phone reception and so on, so we had to ensure that these services were provided to these families,” said Scott Falcone, director of State Extension Services at SCSDB in Columbia. “We often send some of our employees in state vehicles and we sort of work with them remotely to provide some instructions.”
Falcone said they would also provide families with recorded instructional videos so that various types of family training could continue safely.
In addition to finding ways to serve students who live in areas that do not support Wi-Fi, administrators also had to find solutions for students who lived in homes that did not have Wi-Fi for other reasons.
New year, new solutions
Because of the school’s traditionally small classrooms – sometimes less than 10 students per class – the school decided to bring in students whose families wanted them to attend classes in person five days a week in August.
The school’s residential students were also allowed to return to their dormitories in August, although they are being accommodated at half capacity – a double room is a single now, Madison said, and the rooms that would have housed four to six children now hold two .
Madison said the school implements the same screening and quarantine measures as schools in public school districts. For example, when a student is dropped off by a parent or taken by bus, their temperature is measured and, if they have a fever, they cannot enter the bus or campus.
However, Madison said she had only a handful of students who had to be sent home before entering campus because they were showing symptoms and said they had no outbreak of COVID-19 on campus.
Madison noted that wearing masks has not been an issue on campus, although some of the masks look slightly different from what you see in stores.
“Our kids are amazing. They are wearing their masks and are not complaining. We bought masks with our logo on them and a lot of kids liked it a lot, but we also keep a constant supply of paper masks for kids that I prefer that,” said Madison. “We have some masks that have clear inserts so that our deaf students can help with communication”.
The 2020-21 school year was one of learning, preparing and adjusting for school campuses and Outreach Services.
In the fall, the SC Department of Education acquired the Canvas digital learning platform for the school. Students were given small weekend assignments to help them get used to the platform, and then the school went completely online between Thanksgiving and Christmas as a test, Madison said.
“They knew how to access assignments, they knew how to track what they should be doing, how to log in. So if we were to go remotely again, we would be prepared for that, ”said Madison.
In addition to offering an alternative way to teach classes, Canvas also helped to complement activities that teachers already did in the classroom. The school’s Applied Academic Center Digital Art instructor, Iosop MacDougall, said that Canvas has made it much easier for students to submit their video essays.
Both the school and Outreach Services are also offering support to families whose children are interned at home for medical reasons or who have chosen to keep them close to home and send them to a school in their district. Madison said the school is ensuring that students have access to the materials they need, from technology to books.
“When you are working with Braille, when you are working with large print, this is not always available when you are off-site,” said Madison.
While keeping up with the ever-changing guidelines and increasing the number of off-campus students is challenging, Madison and Falcone said that caring for their students during the pandemic was rewarding in several ways.
“Witnessing the perseverance of all team members in their willingness to go the extra mile to ensure that their students receive the services they need has been very rewarding for me,” said Falcone. “The South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind is experiencing a pandemic, covering all possibilities of providing these direct services, whether on campus or in school districts.”