ASHLAND — Like educational institutions nationwide, Ashland University has been forced to adapt its curriculum and graduating requirements due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professors have been asked to transition from face-to-face instruction to an online teaching medium, while students were required to return to their off-campus homes and attend online meetings and classes for the remainder of the spring semester.
Ashland University senior Hannah Oney is one of those students. Oney, who is studying early childhood education, completed approximately eight of the 14 required weeks of the student teaching portion of her degree when the lockdowns began.
This does not impact her graduation eligibility though; exceptions have been allowed for those like her.
Recently, she reminisced about what her final week as a student teacher at Clear fork Elementary School entailed.
“During that time, I was able to work with my cooperating teacher and teach lessons in the classroom,” Oney said. “On that Monday, we had a staff meeting where they told us about the news about the coronavirus. By Friday, the school was shut down.
“I didn’t know on that Friday that the school wasn’t going to have me back the next Monday until I was on the way home.”
Oney oversaw the classroom on that Friday because her cooperating teacher was out of the classroom. She was told to have the students pack their belongings to take home with them at the end of the day.
“At lunch, they told us to send home everything with the kids,” Oney said. “We scrapped the lesson plan for the afternoon and just kind of made it work. It was kind of sad because I sat down with the kids on the rug when they got back from gym class, and I told them the news.”
Oney said the children responded bravely and understandingly. They also showed interest in the topic.
Since Gov. Mike DeWine later closed school for the remainder of the spring semester, it was the last time Oney would see those students.
Though some schools have integrated their student teachers into their online learning programs and kept them with their respective classrooms, Clear Fork Elementary School discontinued student teachers, she said.
However, Oney’s classwork at AU has not ceased. The pandemic has moved classes to an online platform, but at no point did they stop because of the pandemic.
Alternative instruction in the education department includes assignments to design online lesson plans and record teaching lessons to an invisible audience.
AU education professor, David Karl also shared his thoughts on how the virus affected some of his students.
“I’ve had contact with a lot of students who have obviously haven take a psychological toll because they’re worried about their futures,” Karl said. “What I’ve told them is that ‘everybody is in the same boat.’ Most of the seniors are undergrads, so most of them live with their parents. They could be cooped up in a small house with a bunch of siblings and everyone is trying to study online.”
For Karl, the transition to an online teaching forum was not a difficult task because he only was instructing one in-person class this semester.
“For me, it’s not a big deal,” he said, but he recognized the transition has not been uniformly “easy.”
Professors with multiple face-to-face classes may have had more difficulty with the transition, Karl continued.
“This time of great challenge and difficulty will bring out the best. We’re all in this together so we have to make it work,” he said.
Looking ahead, Oney is staying positive, too. Although graduating seniors nationwide have experienced an abrupt end to their education, Oney says the lessons she’s learned in the past few weeks have better prepared her for the future.
“I had great experiences this semester that I can talk about in interviews,” Oney said. “I have great references from my supervisor. People have been really supportive.”
