Page 66 - EdViewptsSpring2021

If You Give a Teacher a Cookie

By Deborah Droke, Director of Instruction for Mathematics and Science,
Northern Burlington County Regional School District

If you are reading this grade, and plenty of sanitizing spray. quantified the influence an effective
article, you already The terms asynchronous, synchronous, teacher has on student achievement
that is relatively independent of
on demand and live suddenly became
know just how abruptly descriptors of classroom instruction. anything else that occurs in school
classrooms have been As the winter surge increased cases, (for discussions see Haycock, 1998,
Marzano, 2003, Nye, Konstantopoulus,
we required teachers to be flexible and
transformed by this able to pivot back and forth working & Hedges, 2004)” This research echoes
from home and in person for extended the fact that teachers have the most
pandemic. In the Spring of periods of time with short notice. important job in any school district.
2020, teachers completed the most Teachers make school happen no Yet, according to a recent Horace
unimaginable task of shifting from matter what the situation. Right now, Mann Educator Health and Well-Being
brick and mortar learning to fully digital teachers are a school district’s most study, large numbers of teachers were
learning in a matter of hours. They valuable asset and they need to be considering leaving the profession
quickly earned the status of essential empowered. before the pandemic and now 27%
workers as parents struggled to Educational research over the years of teachers considered leaving the
replicate what happened every day in has validated the importance of an profession. According to the study, 77%
our schools and seemed so effortless. effective teacher to maximize student of teachers revealed that they were
As the summer approached, we called achievement and educational success. working harder this school year than
on teachers to make yet another shift Dr. Robert Marzano in his book The Art ever before and 60% of the teachers
to various hybrid models that forced and Science of Teaching suggests that enjoyed the job less than they have in
them to instruct not only fully remote the effectiveness of a teacher affects the past. And yet 73% of the teachers
students but also students physically student learning more than any other in this study continue to keep classes
present with cloth masks, not medical going in an unprecedented environment.
factor of schooling. “Many studies have
Educational Viewpoints -64- Spring 2021