Waipahu intermediate teachers aim to find positivity in online schooling
By Georgia Clair Johnson-King and Aloha Lau
10 November 2020
The classroom walls at Waipahu Intermediate (Photo via Zoom / Aloha Lau).
Waipahu Intermediate School has joined others nationally in transitioning to online learning. As of November 2020 the school remained online.
“Itʻs up to us as leaders to raise the Calgary call,” Waipahu Intermediate principal Howard Chi commented via Zoom.
The school uses a program called Google Classroom. Google classroom can sync up with students calendars, offers plagiarism scanning and a variety of other teaching resources.
Other schools across the country are using programs such as Zoom, Blackboard and Microsoft Teams in order to maintain education standards during the pandemic. Despite the resources, many students are still impacted.
“Theyʻre struggling this year, even based off assessments from a year ago you can see they have gone down a level or two,” said Waipahu Intermediate teacher Kumu Kris,.
Kumu Kris sits at her desk in her empty classroom (Photo via Zoom / Aloha Lau).
“Theyʻre struggling this year, even based off assessments from a year ago you can see they have gone down a level or two,” said Waipahu Intermediate teacher Kumu Kris,.
Principal Chi remains positive about the future of technology and its benefits to teachers.
“Itʻs forcing a generation of teachers to expand exponentially,” said Chi. Next year we might be in person, but now we have all these resources online so we can extend our learning and our teaching to the home bases,” he added.
The Google Program used to educate students at Waipahu Intermediate (Photo via Zoom / Aloha Lau).
Education officials will be following the Hawai'i Department of Healthʻs COVID-19 guidance for schools when debating whether to transition back to in-person learning.