Lessons Learned In A Pandemic Classroom

Teaching during the height of COVID-19 required educators to show up for their students like never before. Second grade teacher Toni Bayerl had to figure out how to work within very specific constraints while still bringing her class the best learning opportunities possible.

The Educational Services Team at Austin PBS worked with Toni in the summer of 2019 when she assisted with technical support for summer camp facilitators. We reached out to see if she could share some of her experience surviving, and even thriving, during a pandemic school year, while also tackling a new grade level.

“We have been asked this year to pivot a whole lot. We would plan for in-person learning and then we would be sent virtual or we’d be virtual and then have to come back to in-person. Or COVID would happen and we’d have to go home.”

The adaptations required of Toni – and her fellow educators around the world – were daunting.

Keeping everyone safe often necessitated quick shifts for teachers and students. Toni sometimes wouldn’t learn until 10 p.m. the night before that there would be a switch from teaching at school to teaching virtually.

Toni shared, “One challenge for teachers this year was to find content that you could use both in-person and remote at the same time.”

As some kids began to transition back to the classroom, Toni was tasked with leading simultaneous hybrid instruction where some children were virtual and some children were in-person.

Like so many other resourceful teachers, Toni figured out a way to make everything work, despite the complicated situation. One of her secrets: leaning on the PBS LearningMedia site she’d been introduced to during her summer work with Austin PBS.

“This year more than ever I’ve used PBS LearningMedia in my classroom mainly to help me make lesson plans. I used PBS LearningMedia a lot for last minute changes because I knew that you guys are reliable, you’re trustworthy.”

PBS LearningMedia’s free site has been a teacher favorite for years, but as education routines changed due to COVID-19, traffic to PBS LearningMedia more than tripled. With thousands of lessons aligned to state standards across the United States, teachers can easily find what they need by grade level or subject matter. And the content is incredibly dynamic, with videos, games, galleries and many other interactive interfaces.

Toni knew that rolling with the day-to-day changes of the pandemic would be smoother with educational material she could get to online. “I love how easy it is to be able to just drop a link in the chat for students to be able to use and they can access it right away without having to log in or sign up. Just to have that at my fingertips – and know that there was always a resource for me – was just extremely helpful and kind of put me at ease.”

And of course, as frustrating as the inconsistencies of this school year were for educators, they were also hard on the students. But Toni quickly realized that PBS LearningMedia was a tool her kids were equally excited about using.

“I have seen how kids have responded to me doing some kind of engagement, versus them actually watching something, and I feel like I need to turn into a PBS character in order to get my kids’ attention because they enjoy watching much more than they like to hear me talking. PBS LearningMedia has given some really great insights. I get to watch them learning and then we get to talk about it.”

The innovations that have come out of teaching through a pandemic are here to stay. Educators are better equipped than ever before to handle the complexities of a classroom environment. Now that Toni has seen the benefits of integrating PBS Learning Media into her routine, she’s spreading the word to her fellow teachers.

“They come to me and say ‘What are you doing?’ or ‘How are you using this?’ and I’m like, ‘Go get yourself a PBS LearningMedia account and your life will change.’”

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