Becoming a Teacher During a Global Pandemic: Navigating Field Experiences During Covid-19

Dr. CharlotteA. Mundy Henderson Columbus State University

The shift to online and remote learning in the spring of 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, led teacher educators to put classes online and adjust field experiences to meet an ever-changing need. This study explores the experiences of nineteen elementary education pre-service teachers who entered the field during a global pandemic and were completing their second semester of elementary education coursework and field experiences. Findings highlight increased technology integration and the ability of pre-service teachers to adapt and be flexible as positive learning opportunities brought about by Covid-19. Building and maintaining meaningful teacher-student relationships (both at the college level and in elementary school placements) was one of the biggest challenges.

Keywords: Covid-19, pre-service teacher education, field experiences, technology, relationship building

For students and teachers in the southeast, everything changed on March 12, 2020. Schools were closed and families were encouraged to social distance and essentially quarantine. Quickly, things changed. For the remainder of that spring semester, there would be no more face-to-face class sessions with students working in small groups, presenting, giving feedback, sharing, talking, and laughing together (MundyHenderson & Martin, 2020). Instead, teacher educators were asked to pivot and move courses and field experiences online.

Students were asked to assimilate to this new format and learn how to Zoom, join chat rooms, meet synchronously while muting and unmuting, sharing screens, and so forth. The expectations for those in the field of education were even greater, as they were expected to master this new set of skills for both their university courses and their field placements (K-5 elementary classrooms). In schools across the world, the public health crisis led to a huge and immediate shift from classroom face-to-face instruction to remote learning. To those school districts who were fortunate enough to have the technology readily available, computers and Chrome Books were issued to students and remote learning began through a series of whole class synchronous zoom sessions (Brown, 2020; Wagner, 2020). To the school districts that did not have technology readily available, packets of work were made for parents to pick up outside of the school hoping the parents/guardians would have technology (iPads, smart phones, and/or computers) that their children could use to log-on and attend class sessions when able.

During this global pandemic, all students (K12 and post-secondary) have experienced a huge decrease in the social contact they have with their peers. In the beginning of the pandemic, many students were required to attend school remotely or in a hybrid fashion and even one year later (when this study occurred) most K-12 classrooms still operated at a limited in person capacity with online and hybrid instruction being the norm (Murphy, Cook, & Fallon, 2021). The initial school shutdown created a particular challenge for university faculty who instruct and supervise field-based courses (Kahn & Williams,