Showing Virtue During this Virtual Time

ROCKAWAY, NJ- It’s been one month since the Rockaway Borough School District closed down their schools and moved to distance learning and teaching. Lincoln Elementary School’s first grade teacher, Dodi Yobs, is adjusting like the many other teachers on how to give the best education to students virtually.

“I have several students that don’t have parents with the ability to help them with their daily work because they don’t speak English or are from another country and didn’t learn the way their children are learning,” Yobs said. “They rely on my classroom and the school for stability and consistency, a safe place to go, and on some days meals.” Lincoln Elementary School teachers had only a few days' notice to create a plan of action and send materials home with students after finding out they wouldn’t be returning the following Monday.

Because Yobs’ students are so young, she finds herself communicating more with the parents of her students rather than the students themselves. She has essentially been teaching their parents how to become teachers by helping them create schedules, provide technical support for devices, and answer numerous emails and messages on DoJo, a website she uses to communicate with her students for class. She compares it to texting that goes on all day.

“I feel I am on-call all day for parents as some are not having their child do their work during my scheduled work hours,” she said. Yobs understands families may have their own things going on at home which is why she doesn’t hold this against her students. She makes herself available to answer parents’ texts and emails even when she is not scheduled to work.

Yobs communicates with her students and their parents through ClassDoJo where she can post morning messages, Google Slides, a Zoom meeting time and closing messages for the day. She is also using Google Meet for one-on-one meetings with her students and their parents to answer questions.

Yobs is still able to make her class fun even if they’re not in a physical classroom. They have daily meetings on Zoom where she’ll read to them, have math lessons and one of her students presents a riddle. Yobs has even created a scavenger hunt where her students find certain objects around the house.

For her students whose parents don’t speak English or understand the assignments, Yobs has become a teacher to the students' parents. She checks in on families that may be food insecure to make sure they have groceries. “This is not new though, just different” she said.

Parents and students have given positive feedback towards Yobs’ guidance. Parents are very grateful for the assistance and support Yobs has provided, saying she has gone above and beyond. Yobs even wrote notes to her students to place inside Easter eggs and put them into their mailboxes. One thing that has Yobs relieved is realizing and seeing that over the past four weeks her students are doing well.

Yobs’ advice to teachers that may be struggling with their adjustment to virtual teaching is to take it one step at a time. Don’t try to solve everything at once. She says there are so many excellent resources that it may be overwhelming. She suggests teachers do what is best for them and stay in touch with parents.

Thinking about the positive is all one can do during this unpredictable time. As a co-chair of her district’s social committee, Yobs has set up a weekly Zoom meeting with teachers and paras to just talk. The overall feeling among her colleagues is that while home is nice, they want things to go back to normal. “It’s nice to be with family, their pets, wear comfortable clothes, not worry about makeup and hair, but we all agree we miss our kids and want to be back in the classroom,” Yobs said.

Yobs has had more time to reach out to family. She has many scheduled Zoom and FaceTime dates with friends and family. “I think the other positive thing is that it has forced me to slow down and take in my surroundings more,” she said. Yobs enjoys spending more time with her husband and sons, and her dogs are certainly happy to have her home all day.