Dr. Alice M. Davis

Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center
Springville, Pennsylvania
Dr. Alice M. Davis, Executive Director

EDUCATING THE EDUCATOR DURING A PANDEMIC

With the world of education flipped upside down with the new COVID era; educators have had to re-invent themselves.  Traditional learning has been transitioned into virtual learning and students are now learning, at times, in their homes. This presents a whole new set of instructional delivery issues. Teachers have had to turn their focus to finding new ways to teach. Thankfully the Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center has an exemplary staff that is willing to do whatever it takes to meet this challenge and their Lead Teacher is key to the success of implementing new strategies.

Mrs. Kim Cosklo, SCCTC Lead Teacher continues to be an instrumental team member on the Susquehanna County Career & Technology Center staff.  She also joined the Temple Teacher Leader Network for this school year representing the SCCTC. Mrs. Cosklo has attended numerous conferences, both virtually and in person, to bring back to her colleagues new ways of instructing. She has been a presenter at the PACTA conference for years always focusing on new instructional techniques. She has also carried those presentations to the Integrated Learning Conferences for the past few years. She is actively involved in the TAP/ SREB programs and has led many in-services with this information in math, as well as English language arts offering creative and innovative teaching strategies.

As Lead Teacher Mrs. Cosklo has been instrumental in engaging staff with the use of Go-Pro cameras, Google Classroom which includes Google Meets and You Tube allowing for virtual classroom demonstrations. Demonstrations are livestreamed and saved in Google for those students that were not on the livestream.

All of our students returned to school in-person on August 27, 2020. We are on a 4 day in-person schedule with Wednesday’s being virtual for sanitation purposes. Any student that cannot follow this schedule for COVID related issues is provided with online instruction. All lessons are recorded and able to be accessed online by the virtual learners.  The mission of the staff is to structure lessons with multiple exposures in an effort to have the students become independent strategic learners. This is being accomplished by setting clear objectives and providing virtual feedback to the students. We have also incorporated project based learning in our virtual lesson plans in an effort to add a team member encouragement component to online learning. Mrs. Cosklo has been proactive in ensuring that the teachers have the virtual educational skills necessary to be sure the student body continues to get the same quality of education as they were receiving pre-COVID.  With her insightful and creative approach to re-educating the educator, the students at the SCCTC are thriving in these unprecedented times.