Local teacher brings lessons learned from COVID into the classroom

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – The first day of school is always exciting for students and teachers. For new teachers, this year is going to be a special one.

“It was a very helpful experience coming into this new year,” Alexis White said.

Alexis White is a brand new second-grade teacher at Henderson-Ward-Steward Elementary school in Starkville. After student teaching last year, she’s ready to finally run her own classroom.

“This is my dream job and so I’m finally here and I’m very excited. I’m very excited for my new kids coming in and I just can’t wait to have the best year yet,” White said.

White said getting here wasn’t easy. As a student teacher during the height of the pandemic, it’s taken a lot of hard work.

“So we would clean the desks after each class came in. I had about 4 classes that consisted of 70 to 90 students. Some of those students were online and would occasionally come into the classroom if they felt the need if their parents felt it was safe enough to come into the classroom. But I did have a Zoom class which I participated in and taught with,” White said. “Trying to figure out how to keep the students safe while also creating fun activities. so, you still want to keep that engagement up and the motivation up while still keeping them safe.”

Julie Fancher is the school principal. After hiring 19 new employees who student taught during COVID, she said she’s confident in her staff.

“With those student teachers interning during the spring, we got to see how resilient they were, they are. We got to see if they were team players. This was a different time to finish up and they, they have to have a lot of different skills and things to think about that we’ve never thought about before,” Fancher said.

Even though this school year is going to look a little different than last year, new teachers said the skills they learned during COVID, are going to help them this fall.

“I had to become very flexible while I student taught just to learn new skills on how to adapt with COVID because there were new regulations that we had to follow from the MDE and CDC. So flexibility is still going to be a huge skill set with this first year,” White added.

“When I interviewed her, she was not drained, she was full of energy and that’s what I’m looking for in an elementary teacher,” Fancher said.

The Starkville School District will be discussing COVID guidelines this week.