Foreign language teachers find ways to help larger group of students stuck at home for COVID-related reasons

Looking out at the empty seats in her classroom on Jan. 17, AP Spanish and Spanish 3 teacher Sarah Voorhees took attendance, noting that only two-thirds of the class was present; the rest were out with COVID-19, or had come in close contact with someone who was sick. As she uploaded the class’s worksheets to Canvas, she wondered how much her online students would actually learn in their time away.

Although the number of students coming to class has improved in the weeks since, some are still staying at home in order to stay safe or after having had close contact with COVID-19 positive individuals.

Voorhees, who has taught Spanish for 22 years, said she believes that these past two years have been extremely difficult for foreign language instructors. Although many classes had difficulty switching to online classes during the 2020-2021 school year, foreign language classes were hit especially hard. Since the majority of the lessons were oral, students could not absorb the material as effectively online. Now, with the rise of the omicron variant, many foreign language teachers have faced these issues again.

“I put everything on Canvas and VHL central, which has some oral speaking portions,” Voorhees said. “However, a couple people that were absent were somewhat lost on their audios. Just like last year, if you’re not in class, you’re missing all of the oral practice.”

Additionally, according to Voorhees, the in-class material is often time-consuming, which can be hard for some students to make up in later weeks. 

For example, her AP Spanish class recently wrote an hour-long essay based on a video they had watched. Since this assignment was considered as an assessment, the students who missed the assignment had to make it up when they returned in person. However, since class time is extremely limited with the number of assignments completed in class, these students had to write the essay during the tutorial, which is only 55 minutes long.

Spanish 3 and 4 Honors teacher Stephany Marks has faced a similar problem, with many of her students missing class for COVID-19-related reasons. In an attempt to keep them up to date, she has been emailing them with her daily presentations and posting the homework on Canvas. She has also seen some interesting student solutions, such as students doing group work over Facetime or taking pictures of important class material for other students. Marks even had an online student Facetime her friend to stream into the class.

Having seen students’ different ways of learning and connecting from home, Marks is hopeful that the remote learning situation will improve in a way where students will still be able to absorb the material.

“Luckily, it’s the beginning of the semester, so they’re not going to get too far behind,” Marks said. “But it’s nerve-racking, for both students and teachers. So many people are in and out all the time. But, I understand we all just do the best we can do, and hope that everyone stays healthy.”