By NICK DILL, student reporter
The 2020 corona virus pandemic is affecting the education system, and how students learn and teachers teach. This is a weird environment for everyone in the education system.
Teachers and students both are having to adjust to new online alternatives for the remainder of the school year. This is a lot more difficult than it may seem. Students and teachers both are learning to navigate through this weird time.
Erin Dill, a special education teacher at Ethridge Elementary in The Colony, Texas, is one of the people dealing with the impact on the education system. She has had to totally switch her learning style and has had to learn a new video chat software to teach her students online.
Dill has a new work environment and is forced to work at home while her two children and husband are also working at home. She is closed and isolated in her bedroom to get some silence. Feeling dazed and confused is how she describes her feelings about this pandemic.
She sits at her desk, limited to what her tiny camera screen can display. She is feeling frustrated and just wants to be back in her classroom.
Surrounded by her three dogs and two cats, this is the new classroom for her.
She is always talking about her chickens that started as a school project but have turned into her new hobby. The first thing she does when wakes up is to open the chicken coop, and the last thing she does at night is close the coop.
Dill also bought two ducks. These bring a smile to her face and help cheer her up through this tough time.
The weekend is the time for Dill to relax, to relieve the stress from the unusual work week. She feels calm then and enjoys watching movies with her family and lying by the pool.
All she wants is for life to go back to normal. She just wants to be able to see her students and co-workers in person and not through a computer screen.
(Erin Dill is the author’s mother.)