COVID19 – The New Normal
Luis Cruz
My name is Luis Cruz and my Photovoice project is focused on the Coronavirus, and how it is considered to be our new temporary normal.
The participant I have chosen is my mother, Esther Gomez. She is a strong independent Puerto Rican who just turned 46 years old. A mother of three who currently works at a public school as a teacher for special needs kids. I choose my mom because she is the most important person in my life and I wanted to take a deeper look at how she is dealing with the current situation and what she is being able to get out of it. Esther is very happy I chose her as my participant and is willing to fully cooperate throughout the project, giving me full consent to use her pictures and written statements.
“Teaching from the classroom to online learning has become one of the biggest challenges in the education system. During spring break the outbreak of coronavirus became a big concern to our health and our society. The education system as well as many other companies needed to follow the stay-at-home order from the government. For the education system that meant that the teachers only had a few days to prepare for a new mission, distance learning. Learning how to meet with our students online, assign homework, present new lessons, follow the standards from the district, and at the same time show the students that there is hope, is a big mission that we, as teachers, need to accomplish. Teaching elementary grades can be very emotional, students at that age become very attached to their teachers, we are their role models, and the ones that support and cheers them up every day when they enter the classroom. Distance learning is a big responsibility that we have towards our students, other than teaching, the students need to feel that they will receive the same support as if they were in class, they need to feel that by keeping a positive attitude everything will be okay. Learning to use Google Classroom, which is the distance learning program used in our school, was not that easy at the beginning. We were asking ourselves: “Will this work? Our students will be able to connect? Will they do their work? Will they attend to our Google Meet? There were so many unanswered questions that nobody knew the answers, only time will tell. Now that we have been for three weeks with distance learning, some of those questions have been answered. I believe that for being in such a short time of distance learning it hasn’t been that bad at all. The way parents have helped us with our students it’s been awesome, I believe that without their support, the results would be not the same. All we have to do is keep a good attitude, keep calm and just take care of our health until this ends.”
It is very rare for my mom to complain. She truly loves her job, and wouldn’t change it for any other. As seen above, she is a little upset that she is not allowed to see her students on a daily basis and it’s just not as exiting work