Young teachers talk future of education: 'It's really uncharted territory'

Every morning Jenny Lindholm walks into her empty classroom, opens up her laptop, and starts teaching to her students. It's not what she pictured when she entered the field in 2019.

Lindholm, of St. John, is currently the first grade full-time e-learning teacher at Kolling Elementary School. It's not how she saw her first years of teaching, and like many other educators the pandemic took her by surprise last March and forced her to do new things.

"Definitely I would rather have my kids in person, getting to know them in the end and being there with them every single day," Lindholm said. "I will say though, teaching online, I've gotten to get to know the families a lot more because they pop in all the time - I'm always talking to parents through Google Meets."

She said the rise in the use of technology has proven to be something both teachers and students have been able to adapt to, and can potentially be used in the future, long after the return to fully in-person learning.

"I think now with all of this new technology that we've found out that we have available to us, and all the different resources and online sites, I think this is something we can start looking for, for the future," Lindholm said.

Teaching during the pandemic was not something Ronny Lee expected to do. It was anxiety inducing, he said, and unlike anything else. However, like Lindholm, he adapted.

He wanted to learn through the experience and he did, he said. He found the teaching methods he was taught while in school will be useful in the future - just not right now.

"Many of the teaching methods that I learned throughout the teacher education program at IUN were really focused on student engagement and how students do group work with each other or how they collaborate with one another," Lee said. "Obviously COVID kind of put a pause on that right now. I'm not saying that I'm going to throw those ideas away for the future, it's just I have to put them on the pause right now."

Lee, of Schererville, is one of many teachers who will begin their careers amid the pandemic. He expects to graduate from Indiana University Northwest next month, and just completed his student teaching at Thomas A. Edison Jr. Sr. High School with Lake Station Community Schools.

As he taught during the pandemic, he said he discovered new ways to do things. He learned more about the different types of technology that can be used in the classroom, and said he, like Lindholm, thinks technology could have a spot in the future of education, though he's unsure of what it will be like as a whole.

"As far as how the future of education is going to look at this point, it's really uncharted territory," Lee said. "Even though we've been doing online and virtual for the past several months, what's it going to be for the next several years? It's just very vague and unknown."

He said as teaching is more difficult when 60% of your students are behind screens like his were, but he still found ways to reach everyone, and he thinks other teachers have done the same - which, no matter what the future holds for education, is a piece he believes will remain.

"I think even though teachers may feel lie they're teaching to a void in the virtual aspect, they're still getting to the students," Lee said. "They're still sculpting them to be human beings."