As a student of the COVID-19 era, I learned a few things a regular class alone couldn’t teach me. I learned to better appreciate the responsiveness of teachers and educators (who has the energy to reply to an email from a student about a quiz at 8PM after teaching over Zoom all day?) and the importance of virtual connections (from text messages to Discord chats to WhatsApp to physical letters).
These weren’t things I recognized much before on my college campus before. As an English and creative writing student, my studies previously had been based mostly on in-person classes with teachers acting as distant mentors, rather than being warriors for my education and the education of my classmates. Similarly, taking classes on my personal laptop in my childhood bedroom just didn’t feel the same as sitting in a circle surrounded by classmates discussing literature.
Suddenly, however, when classes switched to online learning, teachers became someone students could talk to. They were always available to answer questions and were happy to have conversations about the topic. If you were willing to put in the work, so were they.
Both lessons taught me the importance of a group like School Perceptions. It’s never been more important than now to support teachers and students. But how do we support someone if we don’t know how they feel?
In my time since beginning as an intern at School Perceptions this summer, I have been able to see the evolution of several surveys – from their first drafts and the hard work that goes into them, to the surveys being mailed, to creating the final reports that can be brought back to the school. It has been a great experience to be able to participate in the creation of these surveys and their reports, and I look forward to the new lessons that are ahead.
The School Perceptions Blog and Resource Center features the voices of our team members. This post was written by Lindsey Naze, Data Analyst.