adaptation

By Keilani Jasmin

The pandemic has affected us all, whether we have liked it or not.

Many schools like Yerba Buena (YB) had to order distance learning for the safety of students and staff. Teaching over Zoom was something entirely different and new — especially for John Kremzar, a computer science and math teacher at YB.

The switch from in-person to online had posed many challenges, including people having to learn and use this new type of teaching. For Kremzar, one of them was specifically the pressure to adapt in order to bring forth things like assignments for students.

Kremzar: “[It] forced me to learn how to use Zoom, [and] how to deal with Zoom bombing… it forced me also to use a lot of online techniques for supplying material to the students and also for giving tests and things of that sort.”

The part Kremzar deemed the hardest about moving his classes online was the absence of personal contact. Communication plays a big role in how he teaches, as he depends on it to make sure his students understand the concepts of what he's teaching.

Kremzar: "The lack of individual contact with students. You find that you say something and unless a student asks a question or acknowledges that they understand, you really don't know if the students are picking up the material or not. If you're in a classroom, you can always make cold calls and find out if somebody understands something or not. And then, if they don't, you can kinda help them along."

Another decision was choosing what materials were more important to teach than others. He had to fit in all the significant concepts within the time he had with his classes virtually.

Kremzar: "It made me pick and choose among the things that I was teaching. I recognized that I didn't have enough time to teach everything that I wanted to."

At least there is something good that came out of these hardships. Kremzar used the things he learned over the course of online learning to make his materials easier to access for students.

Kremzar: "I have changed though, from the way I previously worked before the covid and the distance learning. I'm using Google classroom now a lot more frequently. I am making a lot of material available to the students in Google classroom, whereas during the distance learning I was using shared folders and stuff like that. So making material available to the students was one of those things online that I picked up. I'm using Google classroom now which is something I didn't really use in the past."

Even though online learning had its difficulties, Kremzar was proud of his effort to give as much knowledge as he could during the challenging time.

Kremzar: "I'm glad that I was able to pass on as much information as I did during that period."

Kremzar is a wonderful teacher, and he's a reliable source of support if you ever need to solve a math problem on your homework.

For the Warrior Times, this is Keilani Jasmin.