Miss Andrea Prudencio – Grade 2 Class Teacher

Memories can give you a Renewed Focus

This quarantine still seems surreal to me. I still remember when I was waking up every morning, being able to go to school and look forward to the amazing learning journey of my students. As much as it has been challenging, e-learning has still been an opportunity for great learning.

During the first week of e-learning, parents, students and myself were overwhelmed with trying to find our way in this new system, I was reminded of my childhood. I remembered how my mom would sit beside me with a big, red English-Spanish dictionary trying to help me with my homework. My dad, who spoke English, was a pilot and was usually not at home.  My mom did not know English, yet she found a way to support me in my early Elementary years, until I was independent enough to do my homework on my own. We had no internet, no apps, limited help, and yet we still figured out the answers. I have realized how lucky we are right now in this e-learning journey. It has been a challenging and stressful week, but I have access to so many more resources than my mom and I did when I was learning English.   I am thankful that this memory came when it did as it gave me a renewed focus.

Every week brings improvements to the e-learning program at NIS. Some of the advances we made as teachers included:

• We create videos to help children understand the Powerpoint presentations.
• We learned to use different video conference platforms and utilize ClassDojo to its fullest potential

In the e-learning journey thus far, our students are becoming more independent, uploading their own work, creating their own videos and are learning skills that will be useful for a lifetime.

We now know that parents and students are feeling better about how their learning is going as a result of the lessons we are giving and the support we are able to give our families.

I miss my class, I miss being in my classroom, I miss feeling the sun and hearing the laughter during break time duty. Fortunately, I am still able to spend time with my students through technology, and I am grateful for that.

Miss Andrea.