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Mrs. Lomenick, my screen is frozen. Jody Lomenick teaches Edison’s virtual kindergarten. courtesy photo
A young student proclaims her concern from a small square, lined up next to the faces of her peers, displayed on the teacher’s computer screen during a Monday morning kindergarten class taking place in a video conference.
Outside each student’s home, the weather is cold and rainy, or “nasty” as another student declares from her video square, so the teacher blames the frozen screen on the conditions and says to give the computer a couple of minutes for the internet connection to become more stable. She is using a different kind of problem solving compared to years past.
Jody Lomenick serves as classroom kindergarten teacher at Edison Elementary School for Bristow Public Schools. She sits in a colorful room filled with educational posters, books and toys. But all the chairs at the tables are empty, with just Lomenick at her desk behind a screen on which her class is now contained.
“My day consists of a computer,” Lomenick said. “I’m checking assignments, doing lesson plans and trying to give feedback on all the work they send in to me so they know that I really am looking at it. It’s time consuming.”
‘Literally everything’ changed for virtual kindergarten. As children learn how to
As children learn how to socialize, practice self-control and navigate the world through finger painting, story times and repeatedly reading simple “sight words” such as “we” and “it,” kindergarten in normal times tends to include close interactions and handson activities.
In a pandemic world, however, the kindergarten experience looks quite different for students. It also looks different for teachers as they work to ensure that the kids they teach are learning the life skills they need, whether in the classroom or attending school virtually.
Bristow Public Schools, a district of about 1,700 students 30 minutes southwest of Tulsa, has been holding inperson classes along with a virtual option since Aug. 13. About 20 percent of students in the district attend the virtual option. At Edison Elementary, kindergarteners have been divided into a virtual class and in-person classes.
Lomenick teaches Edison’s virtual kindergarten. On Oct. 26, she led 16 small but determined faces singing the “purple song” together over a video conference call.
“Literally everything I would normally do, I’ve had to make an adjustment to how I would do it online,” Lomenick said. “I have to change it to make it fit the format of being virtual.”
Lomenick teaches her kindergarten class virtually each morning and also meets with students one-on-one son or virtually, for additional instruction.
Along with teaching her students the general kindergarten curriculum of counting to 100, the alphabet and learning 50 sight words, Lomenick also focuses on building life skills.
“Every day, I encourage them to be responsible and get their work finished. Those are the main things: responsibility and kindness,” Lomenick said. “That has changed a lot because I don’t have that social aspect.”
Lomenick starts the class video conference each morning by calling on each child by name. She said this interaction is important.
“I purposely call their name every day and make sure they know this is their class and that we are a group together,” Lomenick said. “I try to work and make sure they have that sense of class and community even though we’re not in-person here together.”
Next, as they would if they were in the physical classroom, students read through sight words and review their numbers and letters. Then Lomenick reads them a story.