Distance learning difficult for teachers, too

Language arts teacher Sara Yanes shared an Instagram post that summed up how she’s been feeling since schools turned to virtual learning to stop the spread of COVID-19.

“The quarantine isn’t a break for teachers and students, it’s heartbreak,” the post reads from the Bored_Teachers account, whose members share
Yanes‘ passion for education.
Yanes teaches ninth graders at Barbara Goleman Senior High School in Miami Lakes.
And although she misses life as it was before the coronavirus outbreak, she said she is working hard to make things work.
She said she constantly reassures the kids and reminds them that although it’s through a screen, “I’m right there with them,” Yanes said.
She structures her online classes as if they were happening inside the school building.
At the beginning of each session she lets the kids catch up with each other before she starts their lessons, “to keep it as normal as possible for them,” Yanes said.
She is proud of her students, and wrote to them about how they “have risen to this challenge and are very much meeting expectations.
“It is truly inspiring to me,” Yanes said. “It gives me the drive I need, to continue being their teacher, even if it’s through a screen nowadays.”
Her students get one assignment from her each week, because she knows they have seven other classes and siblings at home who may need help with homework.
For teachers, Yanes said, “It’s super hard to be away from the classroom, our schools, our students, our daily routines. [But].we’re all doing our very best for our students.”