Winooski School District Staff and students face the unpredictable as school reopens

A new hybrid system has been set in place for the Winooski School District in order for schools to open their doors safely to students during COVID-19.

Winooski’s combined elementary, middle and high school reopened Monday Sept. 7, 2020 to its students and staff. Students are separated into two groups, group A and group B, where group A is in-person Mondays and Tuesdays and group B is in-person Thursdays and Fridays, said Kristen Kollgaard, Director of English Language Learning and Curriculum for the Winooski School District, Kirsten Kollgaard. The rest of the three days are remote. 

In groups A and B there are pods of ten students that are taught by a team of teachers who have backgrounds in humanities and science. Each student is only allowed to interact with the students in their pod. Masks must be worn all day long and students must maintain a distance of six feet inside and a distance of three feet when interacting outside. 

Teachers are feeling the pressure of school reopening as they have had to adapt to this completely new style of teaching and learning. 

“Things have felt quite rushed,” said math teacher Luke Dorfman. “There is so much uncertainty so it creates a climate where it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on and how to best support students and ourselves.” 

The first few weeks will focus on community building and social and emotional health and wellbeing, which is referred to as “soft learning.” 

According to Kollgaard, students will be receiving similar if not the same curriculums that will be focusing on “social justice” and “being and happiness.” Teachers will be collaborating with each other to integrate their fields into the curriculum.

“I feel like a lot of the changes that we’ve made have the potential to really transform the way that we teach and work with students so I am quite excited about the idea of it,” said Dorfman. 

“I just worry that a lot of these design decisions have been made fairly quickly and I just don’t know if teachers are necessarily getting the full support that would be required to really make that shift in their practice,” Dorfman said.

Teachers have had to adapt to this new system and some have even had to completely switch the subjects they teach.

Emily Jacobs, who usually teaches art, is now teaching English and Humanities classes. She says she will try to integrate art into her new humanities curriculum so she can continue teaching what she loves. 

“We have a few different teachers who are teaching outside of either their content area or their grade level” said Jacobs. 

Amidst the craziness, being back at school and seeing their students has reminded many Winooski teachers why they love teaching — and why they’re jumping through so many hoops to be back and in person.

“It was such a joy to see students,” Dorfman said. 

When asked about being back at school, 7th grade student “King” Ayub Ali, said that he is happy to be back at school and on the soccer field with his friends, even though there won’t be as many games as a typical season. 

“We’re still talking about it, but we might have four games or maybe less,” Ayub said. 

Another option would be to split the team into two groups, Group A and Group B, and to have scrimmages between the groups in place of what would typically be regular season games.

Peer and teammate, Star, said he usually plays football, but due to the pandemic, the Winooski middle school football season has been cancelled. 

Instead of moping, Star decided to make the best of the situation and joined the soccer team this year. 

“It’s hard, but at least we get to practice because I think we’ll have about four games” Star said.