UT Dallas Alumna Talks Teaching During COVID-19

[Danyelle] Hello everybody. Welcome to Comets Discuss, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network, where we give you mini episodes on big trending topics. For this series we’re talking about COVID-19. With nearly every aspect of life now affected by this global pandemic, we’re interviewing UT Dallas experts — while practicing social distancing — to provide you various perspectives during this evolving situation. I’m Danyelle. Today we’re talking to Sam Serio. Sam is a UTD grad and mathematics teacher at Churchill High School in Northeast ISD located in the San Antonio area. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sam.

[Sam] Thank you for having me.

[Danyelle] So you are part of the UTeach Dallas program. When did you graduate?

[Sam] I graduated last year in December, so December of 2018, I think.

[Danyelle] Oh! So you’ve only been teaching for a year?

[Sam] Yeah, so I’ve only been teaching for a year. I started halfway through the school year last year in January.

[Danyelle] What subject do you teach?

[Sam] I teach Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus, so that’s gonna range anywhere from like 10th graders to 12th graders.

[Danyelle] We wanted to like give you a major shout-out cause we know this has been a really difficult time for teachers, so thank you for everything you’re doing to educate kids and thank you for taking time to talk to us today. But I wanted to ask you, what first drew you to teaching?

[Sam] When I was in high school I really struggled with math. That was my worst subject. I studied for it, I did my homework I had A’s in everything else except for math. And I had a teacher– who I’m actually still in contact with today — during my junior and sophomore years and he really focused on teaching me how to learn and teaching me how to study, more so than just teaching me the math behind it. And I think there’s a huge stigma around math for a lot of people of like, “This is just too difficult of a subject. I can’t do it.” And he kind of inspired me to go into a career of erasing that stigma for a lot of kids.

[Danyelle] What level of math did he teach you? Did he teach you one of the levels that you currently teach?

[Sam] Yeah, he actually taught me the same two classes. He taught me Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus.

[Danyelle] That’s so cool. Teachers don’t get enough credit. How has the transition from the regular classroom to digital learning been, especially since you teach a subject that is already difficult for some people?

[Sam] It was pretty rough at first because all of us are scrambling to come up with content and asking ourselves how can we take this and implement it digitally so that teachers don’t have to do it in the classroom and I think after the first of maybe two weeks or so it started to get easier because we were figuring out, okay, this works, this doesn’t work, and after students and their guardians got used to using the online platform, it’s become a lot easier. I think the most difficult part for probably every teacher is just being away from their kids. Because, you know, we see them every day for at least an hour and we see them as part of our family so it’s like we’re being apart from our family and we spend all this time all year trying to build a positive relationship with these kids and now that we don’t have that face to face interaction anymore the transition has caused us to figure out other ways to keep up that positive relationship and still make the kids feel like we’re there for them.

[Danyelle] So what are some things you’re doing to help implement that positive relationship building in the virtual space?

[Sam] So we’re doing weekly check-ins with our kids. We do hold like tutoring sessions and sometimes I’ll do math for 20 minutes and the other 20 minutes are like, “hey how has your week been?” But with the weekly check-ins, that’s like an online form that kids fill out and we’ll just ask them fun questions — so it’s not even related to math — just fun things to kind of get them talking and letting them know that we’re still there, we’re still listening.

[Danyelle] Are there any challenges that you or any of your teacher colleagues who are STEM professionals are having that other subjects aren’t having?

[Sam] I think — at least with math, I’m sure science is probably pretty similar — the ability to type an answer to a student because a lot of them are now using email to ask us questions and I feel like if you teach a non-STEM subject that’s more heavily reading- and writing-based, you can easily type out an answer for a student but for us our biggest challenge is like what online platform can we use to actually type out the math and I’ve been using my iPad and just like writing stuff on there and emailing my writing to students instead of like physically typing something out. So I think that the ability to write out the math is difficult because if you type like square root of 2 a kid’s gonna look at that and be like, “what is she saying?” And so I think that’s been a big challenge.

[Danyelle] Have you had to make any changes in the way that your students submit their work, as well?

[Sam] We are primarily using Google Classroom and we’re using that and like all of the Google platform to help them submit their stuff versus like printing it out and writing it on a piece of paper. Some of them I guess for math, even though they do submit on the Google Form, some of them are trying to like handwrite it and submit pictures just because paper is such a risk right now with the virus going around and they’re trying to limit the amount of exposure that we have to students submitting on paper and making it safer by doing it online.

[Danyelle] Have you had to change your approach to teaching at all? I know you said that with your previous teacher who was kind of your mentor he helped you try and de-stigmatize math and the learning around it. Have you had to make any major changes to the teaching style that you had beforehand?

[Sam] Oh definitely. I think every single teacher in the U.S. right now and probably in other countries, it’s just like everything’s been flipped upside down for us so now we’re really focused on how do we make the students the most successful with the limitations that they have on them at home and that the teachers have on them at home. So instead of following like our traditional way of teaching and our traditional curriculum, we’re focusing on evaluating what skills are the kids going to need most in their next math class and really trying to focus on those instead of moving on to new material because if we move on to new stuff they’re only going to get like a broad understanding of that material and that’s not really going to help them in the future. So we’re changing our teaching to focus on just a small set of really core skills is going to help them in the next year and a lot of teachers now we’re making video lessons. I have like my YouTube channel that has all these lessons on it. We’re doing video tutoring sessions, which is a lot different for many teachers and then just finding online resources that some of us maybe haven’t used in the classroom before to help the students visualize the math.

[Danyelle] Do you think being in the UTeach program helps prepare you to make this type of 180 change?

[Sam] Yeah I think for sure. UTeach is very focused on inquiry-based learning and having the students kind of have self-discovery moments and their lesson model is to have students explore the content and kind of come to their own conclusions before the teacher steps in and lectures. So I think that students now are doing that at home everyday because they don’t have a teacher in front of them telling them how to do a problem so they’re kind of having to do some of their own exploring and UTeach gives us the tools and training on how to make lessons that are gonna allow students to do that without feeling like they’re drowning in the material.

[Danyelle] We actually interviewed Katie Donaldson for another episode of this exact podcast. She said that there were UTeach resources that they provided to new teachers. Are you still receiving those resources?

[Sam] It’s kind of like an online forum, I guess you could say, of UTeach teachers that are sharing resources with each other and you know they’re there in the field right now with the students and they are teaching so those resources are really helpful to kind of bounce ideas off of each other and see what other teachers are doing to make this work.

[Danyelle] Have you found anything that you were like, this is a hidden gem and I’m gonna share this with all the UTeach teachers?

[Sam] There’s a couple of video-making programs that I’ve been using that are awesome because a lot of teachers now, since we do have to– I mean it’s not mandatory that we do the video lessons but it’s a great way to communicate with our kids still and they feel like, “oh this is my teacher,” because it’s my voice instead of somebody else’s voice. So there are some of those programs that have been really great. They don’t require that you stand in front of a screen. It’s kind of more of a screen sharing resource and it allows me to talk students through a problem and make a video that way so it’s super simple and easy for teachers to use and it doesn’t take as much time as some of the other video-making resources.

[Danyelle] That does sound really helpful. I like that that allows you to still, like you previously referenced, like build that connection with your students. That’s so much cooler than them just reading a dry email from you but they get to hear your voice. Have there been any unexpected challenges that have come up?

[Sam] I think that with the grading system, that’s definitely been a challenge because our district has been looking for the best way on how to evaluate students because there’s so many variables at home with kids right now. You know, we don’t know what their family life is like at home. For some of the students that might be watching younger siblings. They might be struggling with a parent is now unemployed. So we’ve been trying to figure out what the best way to grade them is. So I think that figuring out each kid’s situation and how to evaluate them fairly, that’s been a big challenge.

[Danyelle] That’s probably something that people like me who don’t have children in school don’t think about because I was thinking like, oh the hardest part would be getting your kid to actually do their work or, you know, making sure it — cause for me I’m not smart at math so like making sure my kid actually was grasping the material so that I didn’t have to try and help them but that’s really cool that you guys are taking everybody’s situation into consideration and not just having a blanket grading system for everyone especially in this weird uncertain time. Have there been any pleasant surprises that have come during this digital learning phase?

[Sam] There have been a ton. I think the best part has been seeing the community come together to help educate kids. I think now more than ever teachers are reaching out to guardians and parents and I hear the guardians using that math vocabulary with me and that’s really cool to hear, you know, they’re talking about, oh we’re on this topic and they’re using that vocab with me and they’re learning themselves about some of the math and that’s been really cool to watch. In our district we have some of the high school students that really stepped up and they’re tutoring elementary and middle school students because they enjoy working with kids and they know that not everyone has the time to sit down all day with their kid and work on stuff with them. So the high school students have stepped up and done some community service which has been great to watch and I think for a lot of teachers has been really amazing to watch the support and appreciation for educators. You know on social media there’s all kinds of stuff about how much people appreciate their teachers and how much they miss them and that’s been really encouraging for all of us.

[Danyelle] I hope that appreciation carries on far past this crisis.

[Sam] Thanks.

[Danyelle] Cause I feel like y’all don’t get enough love.

[Sam] Oh, thanks.

[Danyelle] Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share from a teacher’s point of view during this crisis?

[Sam] Teachers are working really hard right now to make sure that we’re still giving our students the best experience that we can in this crisis. You know our way of teaching and our interaction with students every day – that’s been flipped upside down. So we’re really working hard to make sure that we’re still delivering that same quality of education that we would be in the classroom.

[Danyelle] Thank you so much again, Sam, for joining us. We really appreciate having you on. It’s awesome to talk to a UTeach UTD grad who’s out there making amazing change in this weird crisis time.

[Sam] Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great to share my thoughts.

[Danyelle] Thanks again to Sam for joining us. You can find links to UTeach Dallas and anything else from today in the show notes. Thanks for joining us. Comets Discuss is brought to you by the UT Dallas Office of Communications. A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to check out our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. For the most up-to-date news at UT Dallas visit the university’s official COVID-19 information web page at utdallas.edu/coronavirus. Take care and stay healthy. Whoosh!

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