This school year has been a weird one due to the COVID-19 pandemic for students and teacher, but there is an extra layer of weird and new experiences for teachers that are new to our school. 

“I love being a teacher here,” said Alexandria Wendell, a teacher of AP Government block, English 9 Honors and Literacy Seminar. 

Wendell has been a teacher for seven years now, her first year she spent at Battle High School, then Jefferson Middle School then finally came back here. 

But Wendell was not the only one ready to be a part of the school. 

“I remember when it opened and how that was such a big deal to the community,” said Patrick McGuire, AP U.S history and regular U.S history teacher.

McGuire lives in the community but was teaching for seven years at Moberly High School before joining our school community this year. 

Ben Pallardy is a PE and Health teacher who also joined this year and has been a teacher for seven years, five of those years at Fayette High School. 

Pallardy expressed how relieved he felt to be a teacher at school with such high technology during the online and even the hybrid model.

“I feel like the way that the technology is used is so far advanced from any district I’ve been in, anywhere I’ve seen [and] I think especially with COVID it’s been such a big deal and it’s really been pushed to the forefront,” Pallardy said. 

Pallardy went on to explain how useful the computers have been.

“Being able to do everything from Schoology,” said Pallardy. “I think the biggest difference is that every student has a laptop so no matter what that’s not a barrier,” Pallardy said. 

But while technology is a great tool it can sometimes cause problems when it glitches. 

“My students can probably attest to this, but there always just seems like there’s one little thing that goes wrong, whether it’s my mic disconnects or [my] computer just shuts down randomly, [or] the ever popular ‘Mr. McGuire why are you muted,’” said McGuire.

One teacher explained how hard it is to be new and online in a school you have not worked in that year. 

 “The bummer is that I was super excited to come back to this school, but wasn’t able to be in the building with coworkers and students on a regular basis until recently. There are also a lot of coworkers that I don’t know and it’s been hard meeting everyone when we aren’t here at school,” said Wendell. 

This teacher is just excited to see students face to face again.

“Being able to see kids [getting] to work with kids in a classroom setting is so much better than just on Zoom,” said McGuire.

Pallardy explained how being brand new to this school and his experience has been for him.

“The first semester it was like I was not really a part of it [because] I didn’t know very many teachers, but now being back it was almost like starting a fresh school year when we [came] to hybrid,” said Pallardy. 

Though this has been a wacky year we are excited to have these teachers as an attention to the Spartan community and know they will do great.