Gianna Sicola

Professor Suk

EDUC-230-02 Education Field Experience

December 2021

How Demographics Affect Students in the COVID Era

Jennifer is a Chief Academic Officer, a Superintendent, for a P-8 school.  She shared the

experiences that she and others in her district had to go through from the pivot in the spring 2020

term to the current moment.  What behind the scenes information or what perspectives did she

share about this COVID era that you hadn't thought about before?  And, how do you feel about

those ideas or those perspectives?

Even though I did know districts had to figure things out for themselves, something that I

had realized before was the impact of the governor. Jennifer had explained that when the

governors statements were released they were done publicly, therefore when all of New Jersey

found out was when the district found out; this in result added more stress on the administrators

because they were finding out things just as everyone else was and this forced them to have to

quickly but efficiently come up with solutions and plans.

Something else that I was unaware of was the idea that all districts were being held to the

same standard regardless of size; Jennifer’s district being smaller meant that “all of that work

[fell] on fewer people” and added more stress and pressure (11:27, Giordano, 2020). Even

though Jennifer’s district was smaller than some, they still were being held to the same standards

that bigger districted were being held too; this almost doesn’t seem fair to me because how can

hold everyone to the same standards if their situations or circumstances are completely different?
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Given all the information about Jennifer’s role and situation, it was really interesting to

hear her perspective; in my opinion I think Jennifer sounded very optimistic but also skeptical of

the pivot, and it seemed she also was able to be a source of comfort for the teachers in her

district. Even though she was in charge of almost the entire district and had lots to try and sort

out, she seemed to be calm about it all which seemed very interesting to me.

Rachel is an elementary teacher who has been teaching for seven years, but she is still

untenured.  Think about the experience that she shared in that regard.  How does this information

make you feel about spring boarding into the Teaching profession?

Hearing Rachel’s story about her tenure struggles made me very upset with how the

system worked and in result failed her. Throughout her interview, she seemed like such a

positive light and someone that would be a joy to work with, or even be a student of, so hearing

such a negative experience I was honestly shocked. Because of her experience with the tenure

process, Rachel had said “the world of teaching is so much more about politics and not really

about educating…what kids need” (39:20, Kumar, 2020). Hearing this from Rachel almost broke

my heart; as much as I didn’t want to fully agree with it, hearing about what had happened to

her, it really made sense. Being in her shoes I couldn’t imagine going through what she went

through, but also this makes me question the legitimacy of the professionalism and support

professional educators have and receive. I chose education because I want to make a change in

children’s lives, but also be able to aid in the formation of the younger generations minds;

Rachel’s story and information showed me that even the people with the biggest hearts and

greatest desire to help students can be done so wrong in a profession that matters so much.

Without educators, or world would go nowhere and have nothing to look forward to; educators
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are worth everything in this world and hearing that can be thrown to the curb so easily, and

dismissed so quickly makes me so upset and worry that I’m going into a profession that doesn’t

really consider the true duties of the job as important.

Jennifer and Rachel work in two very different types of districts; the demographic in one is

typically upper middle class to affluent, and the demographic in the other is typical middle to

lower middle class.  How is that evident in the responses and experiences that they both shared?

To my knowledge, the demographic of Jennifer’s school was not explicitly stated as

Rachel’s was. Jennifer did mention that there were around 500 students in her P-8 schools, which

to me coming from a big district sounds small (I had about 200 students in my grade/class itself),

so it seems like they have more funding given the smaller class sizes. Jennifer had mentioned

that one of the positives COVID had been technology growth; this leads me to believe that her

district had good experiences with technology and not many issues. On the other hand,

technology was one of the major downfalls in Rachel’s district. Rachel mentioned that her

district was faced with families that didn’t have devices for students, or in some cases even

available Wi-Fi; this resulted in the school having to budget laptops and hotspots for majority of

kids at home to have access to the internet and the new forms of virtual instruction. I think from

hearing both Jennifer and Rachel, both the teacher and administrator roles are equally as difficult

during this pandemic, each respectively for different reasons. I think in Jennifer’s case, having to

be in charge of everyone all the way from custodians to the principals was extremely tough

because she had to make decisions that had the best interest for all. In Rachel’s case, I think the

idea of having to educate all students on the same virtual level was difficult because of the

varying socioeconomic statuses; she had to play teacher and tech support role for both her
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students and their parents which could also be very time consuming on top of all her usual duties

as a teacher.

Jennifer shared a final piece of advice in relation to the proposed Substitute Teaching

legislation.  What did you take from that?

I think it was really interesting to hear Jennifer’s opinion to the new legislation. She had

said that “to put a number on something, or to put a number of credits on something does not

equal the value that a potential educator would bring to the table” (42:17, Giordano, 2020). This

to me spoke volumes, because I think it is absolutely correct. To put a credit criterion for people

wishing to start substituting in schools doesn’t make sense to me; you can have someone meet a

credit requirement, but that doesn’t always mean they’re cut out for the job. I personally agree

with Jennifer that you can’t match numbers to the value someone holds as an educator; I think it

is unfair to put everyone on the same line because they have the required amount of credits. In

my opinion, similar to Jennifer’s, I think there should be other determining factors to distinguish

if people are fit to start substituting because you can have someone that is great with kids, or a

natural educator, but they are not accepted because they don’t fit into the credit minimum.
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References

Giordano, J. (2020, October 21). How Demographics Affect Students in the COVID Era [Video].

Interview by K. Suk. Canvas.

Kumar, R. (2020, October 20). How Demographics Affect Students in the COVID Era [Video].

Interview by K. Suk. Canvas.