St. Thomas early education major Shannon Bach knew she would spend the spring of her senior year student teaching. She didn’t know she would be teaching 20 energetic kindergarteners over Zoom.

“They’re usually like,” Bach said and then paused to wave her hands wildly, “all the time.”

Bach described instances of children in her Annunciation Catholic School class sticking their faces into the camera, drawing on the screen and asking her questions unrelated to school, like what the most powerful Pokémon is.

Bach’s mentor teacher, Beth Sable, says the chance to be goofy with peers during the class’ daily Zooms at 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. is no different than time spent in the classroom.

“We had a little girl pull her tooth out live on Zoom yesterday,” Sable said. “They were all chanting, ‘Do it. Do it.’ And of course, I was like, ‘Wait. Does it hurt?’ And she said no, so I go, ‘Then, do it. Do it.’

“That builds their community back.”

From a teaching standpoint, Bach and Sable reworked the rest of the school year’s lesson plans from scratch. The workload for the kindergarteners is lighter, and Sable is more concerned with providing them with “a little bit of normalcy.”

At the start of every Zoom, Bach reads a list of rules the students collaborated with their teachers on to make. One of the most difficult rules has been staying “muted” so that one person is speaking at a time.

“One or two of them can’t really stay muted,” Bach said. “They get too excited.”

Sable, who has been teaching 5-and 6-year-olds for 16 years, hasn’t taught a classroom with a mute button before.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Sable said. “We don’t have that in the real world.”

Because things like student engagement and classroom management are more difficult online, St. Thomas has altered its student teaching criteria to have less student teacher reviews and meetings. Bach submits screenshots of student work, which is assigned every week on Thursday, to give proof of her progress.

A self-proclaimed “work ahead kind of girl,” Bach is already ahead of the requirements for teacher certification. She finished her edTPA, the portfolio required for student teachers to demonstrate their readiness for a full-time classroom, and she took tests with the state last semester.

Sable thinks COVID-19 has presented education majors with a unique opportunity.

“I think it’s allowed those candidates to really take leadership roles, and really kind of take over,” Sable said. “There was no other choice.”

Beyond the time spent recording herself teaching lessons and interacting with students and parents, Bach helps her two nanny kids with their online courses and works with an individual student who needs extra phonics support.

The ability to adapt to the unconventional is something Bach can add to her resume when she begins to apply for kindergarten through second grade teaching positions.

“If something like this ever happens again, I’ll be very well-prepared,” Bach said.

However, Bach hopes nothing like this happens again so that “next year’s candidates can get the full experience that (her class) didn’t get to have.”

So far, Annunciation has made no decisions regarding the 2020-21 school year, but Sable has her fingers crossed.

“The thought of having to meet 5-year-olds that don’t know who I am and have never been in school and have to start online sounds like Mount Everest.”

Mia Laube can be reached at mia.laube@stthomas.edu.