Students and parents are always criticizing the challenges that come with online learning, as schools around the country are forced to close down due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Remote learning presents the students with countless distractions, which has become one of the teachers’ biggest frustrations.

Working more now than ever in her previous eight years of teaching, Skyline High School teacher Mrs. Bronson shares her story of why online learning is harder on teachers than most might think.

“Because of all the distractions students have at home, most teachers including myself are constantly having to explain directions more than once, especially to some of the younger kids,” Bronson said. “In addition to the distractions, teachers are struggling to make connections with their students, since we can no longer have in-person contact.”

Attempting to make connections with the students has become an aggravating problem for teachers around Skyline. Styles of teaching has changed significantly, due to the fact that teachers don’t have strong relationships with their students.

“Since I can no longer physically interact with my students, it feels unnatural to teach how I used to in a real classroom,” said Bronson. “Group work and class projects would be assigned frequently in the past, but because my students can’t interact with each other in person anymore, I now feel forced to give lectures in order to teach the information.”

In addition to all the distractions and weaker connections with the students, teachers are also having to adjust to less class time. Because of remote learning, the Issaquah School District that Skyline High School is a part of, has taken on a new schedule for the 2020-2021 school year. The schedule now only gives teachers essentially three days of “interactive teaching”, with a little over three and a half hours of instruction a week.

“Less class time has definitely forced me to make huge adjustments to my teaching,” Bronson said. “With so much less time in the school year, I have had the extremely difficult task of choosing what content to teach and what content to cut from my lessons. This is especially challenging because I am a history teacher, and all of the content in my classes seem too important to cut.”

With all of these difficulties, teachers are struggling to help students as much as they can, while at the same time figuring out their own situation. Remote learning has proved to be hard on the students, but yet just as hard on the teachers.