This past year has been rough on both students and teachers, but the focus has mainly been on students. We need to focus on the teachers too, they are the glue that holds schools together. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

North Alum and Spanish teacher, Jennifer Parga has been teaching for 26 years and has been at North for 16 of those 26. “I’ve had to be more tolerant with my peers and my students. However, I have also been more vocal about big things that bother me and that I find important especially advocating for my teachers (as dept. chair) and my students,” Parga said.

Teachers are facing so many difficulties in this school year. “It is a pandemic; there is still a pandemic happening. No mask mandate meant that we had to create seating charts and mark which kids were masked and not masked. That has gotten fixed with mask mandate but made beginning of the year difficult. I had Covid in Jan and I am still not fully recovered; I have no taste or smell. In Jan, I had blood clots. It was so scary. I’m scared of getting it again even though I am vaccinated.” Parga told us.

Another difficulty she mentioned is the rough communication through the chain of command. “We get information late/last minute and that makes implementing all that we need to do more complicated. We get information that is ever changing and that also creates fatigue.”

Science and Engineering teacher, Hannah Kelderman has been teaching for 17 years and has spent all 17 here at North. “Students are behaviorally/socially/emotionally behind 2 years so there are more issues to address.” Kelderman mentioned.

Kelderman told us that “kids are now used to turning in everything late…and with SRG I don’t know that that will change.  I actually think the late work policy is hurting kids…they think they have forever and it catches up with them as they can’t get everything possibly in before the end.”

Emily Tanner has been a teacher for 8 years and has taught at North for all 8, as an English teacher.

Tanner mentioned, “so this year we started the school year where masks were not mandatory and the district found out real quick that that was not a great idea, because if one student is positive then we have to quarantine the students that were around them…trying to manage the student’s that are quarantined I think is hard.”

“This year, no. Last year I hated remote teaching, absolutely hated it, because I came a teacher to work with students. See them, talk to them, and laugh with them. See them everyday, and being remote that was tough. So this year where we’re sorta back to normal is so much better than last year in my opinion.” Tanner told us.

“I’ve learned to pick my battles and let things go and not take things personally. And structure my class in a way where students don’t feel like they have the chance to misbehave because they’re not bored all the time.”