JESSAMINE COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — Jessamine County students and educators returned to the classroom Wednesday.
The school district began the 2020-2021 school year virtually.
While there were definitely technological issues throughout the day, third grade teacher Maddie Lee said the day went smoothly overall at Brookside Elementary School.
“We’re kind of going with it. We’re trying to be flexible and take everything we’ve learned in our training and remember it's always been about the kids,” said Lee.
Kristin Bisher said seeing her students’ faces for the first time in months made everything worthwhile.
“The kids were ready to jump in and we were ready to jump in. I think we’re just all so happy to see each other,” Bisher said. “It’s been a lot of work getting here but seeing the kids today, it all paid off.”
Bisher said one of the challenges of the first day of virtual lessons was balancing actively teaching while simultaneously troubleshooting with parents.
“I had to build in a couple of brain breaks like, ‘Ok, go ahead and do a couple of jumping jacks while I message back a parent real quick,’ but it was smooth and the parents were patient, but the kids were patient and sweet about it,” she said.
Superintendent Matt Moore said technical issues throughout the day were less common than the administration was expecting.
“We were really anticipating that we would be spending a lot of time troubleshooting technology today and what I’ve experienced and heard of so far is its really been pretty minor,” Moore said.
Without technology taking up class time, Lee said she was able to focus on building relationships with her students and establishing ground rules for the virtual classroom.
“We talked through how they can appropriately ask a question, what they should use the chat for. Taking the time to establish those expectations I think is going to pay off as we go forward,” Lee said.
Jessamine County Schools will be using the non-traditional model until through September 9. After that date, the district will re-evaluate whether to resume in-person instruction depending on health official recommendations.
