By Sarah Claborn
When I returned to my school for the first time since we shut down last March, the silence was deafening. I teach at the largest campus in my town with roughly 3,000 students attending each year and class sizes as large as 40+ students per period. When I think about what my classes will look like on campus with the current health and safety guidelines, my blood pressure steadily rises and my chest tightens.
In-person instruction has been a common source of stress during what I have dubbed “The Year of COVID,” with instructions on how to teach the students changing by the second. I have read multiple teacher accounts and talked to my colleagues ad nauseum about how teaching on campus could ever work in the middle of a pandemic. How do we keep our students, ourselves, and our loved ones safe from this elusive virus that seems to morph itself into something that we can’t fight with any degree of certainty?
Sarah Claborn is a former English turned CTE teacher at Bakersfield High School and adjunct Professor for Sacramento State University. Three years running students picked her as “Teacher of the Year,” and she is currently pursuing her EdD in Education: Curriculum and Instruction. She hopes one day to become a full-time professor of education, imparting her passion for teaching youth to future educators.
