In its over 200-year history, St. Louis U. High and its faculty have never faced a task as daunting, as challenging, and as stressful, than facing all of the schedule format changes that were implemented at the beginning of the school year.

All teachers are struggling in some way to adjust to the new block schedule and hyflex model that SLUH instituted at the beginning of the 2020 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some struggle with the block schedule, others with how to fill class time, while some struggle with the new technology.

Theology teacher Richard Wehner, who has been teaching for 47 years, has never struggled with teaching as much as he has now.

“It has been a struggle,” says Wehner. “My daughters along with Mr. Hannick and Mr. Ott have just walked me through this whole process. This (technology) is all new to me. I mean I didn’t know a YouTube video from a Zoom.”

One of the most common struggles that many teachers have experienced was switching from SLUH’s 45-minute classes, seven period class schedule to teaching in a 85-minute classes, four period block schedule.
With this new block schedule, teachers have to find ways to fill a one and a half our class period, while creating an entertaining and engaging classroom experience for their students. 

“I try to get as many group activities in as I can right now,” said AP World History teacher Tim O'Neil. “The interaction is what makes the topics that we cover more engaging, more interesting when you have the opportunity to interact.”

However, due to the numerous safety protocols in place, in-person group work is difficult and sometimes impractical when students have to sit six feet apart.

“I am a big believer in collaborative work, certainly with Zoom you can put kids in breakout rooms, but in-person you have 10 kids in one room, how do you have them talk from six feet away?” said Latin teacher Jennifer Ice.

Teachers are also trying to incorporate more class discussion this year in order to give students a break from sometimes monotonous lectures and promote more socialization amongst the students.

“We do a lot of discussion in my class,” said Wehner. “Getting up there and lecturing for an hour and a half is just unfair. So I break it up and have discussions about what we are learning about.”

Filling the larger class period is not the only way teachers are struggling in this new format. One of the key issues that teachers are finding is that they only see their students two or three days in a row, then go four days without seeing those students again. This rhythm is especially challenging for the Foreign Language Department.

“Vocabulary is a big part of a foreign language class,” said Ice. “And when I go five days without seeing those students and likewise five days without students looking at any Latin word I am finding that my Latin students are not retaining the Latin vocabulary that they should.”

Ice and other teachers are finding that this schedule makes content acquisition a challenge.

“The biggest challenge is helping the students, especially freshmen, retain the material,” said Ice. “They have had three in-person vocab quizzes, and they have by far been the lowest scoring vocab tests I have ever seen.” 

“The most difficult thing is what you have to cut and that’s especially hard for an AP class,” said O’Neil. “ Even though we are meeting for longer periods of time, the actual amount of contact time is drastically cut. There's a lot less time to actually do things and that makes it challenging for any type of AP course.”

Teachers also struggle to interact with both online and in-person students, and sometimes feel that the online students are in a whole separate world.

“My experience with the hyflex model has been that these two worlds (virtual and in-person students) may be operating side by side, but they are not interacting,” said O’Neil. “I kind of feel like the guys at home are just thrown in this odd observer role and that they're not really an active participant.”

Realizing this division between the in-person and virtual students, teachers are trying numerous different strategies to attempt to cross that threshold and make the virtual experience more enjoyable for their at home students.

“In general I like having a really active class. I want to hear from all of the students. I want them to participate. I want to be a scribe of their thoughts more than me telling them,” said math teacher Stephen Deves. “One thing that I do to try and keep all the students engaged is by asking specific questions to the guys at home and trying to make sure that they are with me.”

Bridging that divide between virtual and in-person students is not the only issue that has arisen from the hyflex model. Teachers are finding that there is really no good way to administer a test to both the online and in-person simultaneously fairly, while still being able to adequately access their progress and understanding of the material. 

“I have noticed just how much dishonesty is going on online,” said Wehner. “I have noticed that when I give a quiz the students online do much better than the in-person students, so now every quiz I give, the student is in-class so there are no problems.”

While a majority of the teachers are teaching in person, there are a couple of faculty members who are instructing their students from home. These teachers face a whole other set of problems, especially in regards to making sure their students have a firm grasp of the material. 

“The biggest hurdle of teaching from home while some of my students were at school was that I could not see their faces,” said Ice, who taught from home for a short period of time. “The whole classroom was a single participant on Zoom which means that everybody is in one tiny box so I can’t see their faces, which means I cannot gauge student interest, student engagement, or student understanding.”

Like many SLUH students, many of the teachers wish that there could be a return to normal, a time when they could see their students five days a week, where they didn’t have to worry about interacting with two different classes. However, they are grateful that they can see their students at least once a week, when many schools are still completely online.
“I am really trying hard to not dwell on comparing this year to any other year. We are best served if we try and stop getting back to normal,” said Deves.”I am very grateful that I get to be with students, even if it is just a segment of the students. I am very grateful that I get to teach here, that we haven’t had any major outbreaks here. There is a lot to be grateful for.”

art | Nathan Rich