I interviewed a few teachers at Hunter and I asked them all the same questions. Of course they each had the same questions, yet they often had completely different answers.
I can see why it was a hard topic. The questions were about COVID-19.
The first question I asked was, “How has COVID affected their teaching?” Most talked about how it makes you rethink how you teach and makes you go out of your comfort zones to try to find out new techniques of how to teach with COVID .
Many added that they got a lot more support than they thought from their coworkers. And due to that most said it made them open up more and look beyond what was really there.
My second question was about “if they liked the online situation where they had to do the work online.” They had mixed answers since they all taught different classes and some of the classes were made for in person teaching. One teacher said at first it was very frustrating, but once they got a hang of it was nice, but now it’s harder. This is due to it going back on paper after doing online for those 2 years.
The third question was, “How has COVID become a big part of your life and work? Most teachers said it mixed both of them up due to the concern of their health and their income.
My fourth question was basically on if they preferred how they taught before COVID, or now. Again they had mixed answers for this one. A few said they’d rather go back to how it was before COVID and how they taught, while the other teachers said they liked how they teach now because of all the techniques and help they got for schooling.
My fifth question was, “Do you think that COVID affected teachers or students more? They responded and said “a little more to the students, but then once you think about it, whatever affected the students would affect the teachers as well.” So it affected both in different ways.
My final question was “if they liked anything that came out of COVID?” (For example: the masks, last year’s Fridays, getting closer to family.) A lot had said the Fridays that we used to have off last year were a great help and thought we should have had that again this year. They believed that it was a really good way for students to not get burned out, and it was a great work day for the students and teachers where they would just catch up on work and keep up with whatever they had to do.