By: Catherine Polo
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced schools to make changes in how they operate in order to keep students as safe and healthy as possible. For MU students in the College of Education, one of these many changes comes in the form of online field work.
College of Education students are required to complete a certain number of hours of field work for their degree. Phase 1 students are required to have 16 hours in a classroom environment while Phase 2 students spend 24 to 90 hours per semester at their host school. Whereas students in past years would physically go into classrooms and tutor or work with K-12 students in person, this year looks a little different.
Dr. John Lannin, associate dean for Student Success and Academic Affairs, recognizes that field work will be a different experience than in years prior. While there are some advantages to doing field experiences online, students will miss out on face-to-face interaction.
“The challenge is that now, you don’t have that face-to-face experience, and you need to be in that setting, and you don’t have as many times for more of a serendipitous interaction that would occur with students or with other teachers,” Lannin said. “Everything has to be very planned out. There’s no, ‘I’m walking down the hallway, and I get a chance to talk to a teacher about something that I saw or some event that was occurring.’”
In addition to MU students missing out on forming connections with their mentors, they are also missing out on forming connections with their students. Senior Elizabeth Flippin was worried about bonding with students, something that largely comes from seeing each other in person. But through all the technological barriers, there are still some positive aspects.
“I do think that the attitudes around field experiences from both student teachers and host teachers for me has felt a little more relaxed because we are learning together,” Flippin said. “It feels a little more like a level playing field … I have online tools that I know of that my host teacher might not know of, so it’s a lot more collaborative, and I really like that aspect of it.”
Sophomore Allie Pigg reached out to Mike Szydlowski, the science coordinator at Columbia Public Schools and is working with him this semester on creating a virtual science show for middle school students.
“A lot of the field experience options this year are just students going into these classrooms and staring at these kids as they’re trying to learn over Zoom,” Pigg said. “We’re all in a Zoom world, and I feel like we’re all kind of zoomed out at this point. But our hope with our science show is to really show kids education even though they can’t be in the classroom doing fun experiments.”
Field work looks different for College of Education students this semester, but students are pushing on to make the most of their virtual experiences. Despite the challenges of virtual learning and teaching, this semester has highlighted how adaptable the students are.
“I’m just impressed with what everybody has done, how flexible they’ve been,” Lannin said. “I know it’s not an easy situation that we’re involved with; we wish that we had more opportunities to interact in a variety of different ways. We’ve encouraged people to provide us with feedback, and we’re always looking for ways to improve, too. So, we’re all trying to deal with this, during this challenging time.”
_Edited by Sophie Stephens | sstephens@themaneater.com_