Almost Business as Usual

~story and photos by Bob Gustin

On a brisk October morning, 43 degrees and sunny, Brown County High School’s principal and assistant principal stand outside the main entrance at 8 a.m.

With a friendly formality and clipboards in hand, they greet arriving students, sometimes exchanging small talk. Of course, one boy is in trouble, caught yesterday on a skateboard after he had been warned. He’s told to go wait in the principal’s office.

But since this is 2020, things are a little different. Principal Matthew Stark and Assistant Principal Charles Hutchins also have no-touch scanners, and take the temperatures of students who have been sick. Everyone, students and administrators alike, are wearing face masks—except one teen, who has forgotten his. No problem. Stark pulls one out of his back pocket and the boy is on his way.

It’s the coronavirus pandemic world, and the high school has adapted to the circumstances.

Mostly, it’s business as usual at the high school, or almost as usual. There are no choir or band concerts, no field trips. There will be a homecoming king and queen, but no dance. Reduced crowds at football games means they are all sold out. The soccer team was under a two-week quarantine.

Clubs are still active, but students have assigned seating at meetings. Assigned seats are also the rule in the lunchroom, for the first time. Disinfecting has been added to the janitorial staff’s responsibilities, contact tracing to the nursing staff, and remote learning to the teachers.

Attendance is tracked, as are illnesses. If symptomatic, students are quarantined and their contacts are traced.

As of early October, one student had tested positive for the coronavirus, but the student was kept home by parents.

All that means more paperwork, but “it’s the reality,” Stark said.

But the essential part of life in school— learning—goes on.

Masked Mr. Stark greets students as they arrive.

Stark says about 20 percent of the students are doing some sort of remote learning. Some of those do a program through Indiana Online, a statesponsored program, some through Zoom with classroom teachers. The classroom teaching is referred to as synchronous learning, taking place in real time.

Those remote learners, Stark notes, are sometimes just a few steps away from the refrigerator, the television, or other distractions.

“It puts lots of responsibilities on students and their families to stay focused and keep learning,” he said. “It’s feast or famine. Some remote learners struggle with self-discipline.”

Stark believes in-person teaching is the best, and the students and staff have demonstrated resilience, but the pandemic has meant extra work for the school’s staff.

“They come in every day and get the job done. We try to give some kind of normalcy to a very unnormal piece.”

Mathew Noriega, who has taught sciences for 25 years at Brown County High School, is both worried and hopeful. He teaches most of his classes in person, but has a chemistry course taught via Zoom to 26 students.

“I work more on empathy and interaction” as a teacher, he said, which is difficult to do with distance learning because it is harder to get a read on how students are doing. The Zoom sessions are recorded for those who can’t attend at the specified time, he said, and teenagers are unlikely to admit to having problems knowing it will be widely available. Plus, most of the students’ Zoom images are avatars instead of video since most of the internet connections are not fast enough to support video. That means he can’t see facial expressions or body language to help gauge how students are doing.

Secondly, remote learning makes it harder for teachers to evaluate student work, he said. In a classroom, he can walk around and notice if a student is having trouble with lessons. With remote learning, he has to wait for a student to upload a picture of their work, then download it and make notes on it to send back to the student.

So he prefers in-person teaching, which he calls a “human enterprise.” But he sees some positives to remote learning.

All people learn in different ways, he said, and some students who suffer from anxiety, or are easily distracted, can put on headphones at home and have a better experience.

“Remote learning could continue for a certain group of children” after the coronavirus has run its course, he said. “I flip-flop. A child does great in a bubble, but is that where you’re going to live the rest of your life?

“I still like my job, I’m happy we’re back in school, and I’m proud of the kids. They wear masks without complaining. The remote learners show up on time. It shows the adaptability and resiliency of young people,” Noriega said.

He said he remains hopeful because after all the messed up and sometimes inane responses society has had to the virus, “the kids haven’t changed a bit.”

Some teachers have incorporated the pandemic into their lesson plans. Social studies and government classes are noting how it has affected government, and the biomedical staff has touched on the subject.

Stark said he would not have thought it possible in August to have 80 percent of students in October classrooms. But now he knows it can continue as long as the school—and the community as a whole—is smart about what it does.

It is working, he said, because Brown County is a lowspread area and contract tracing is more feasible.

“With all the political rhetoric and everything surrounding COVID-19, I’m really proud of the students and staff. For the most part, it’s not been a problem.

“We’re going about school here,” Stark said.