Our Community 2020 | Page 24

SUSAN JOY MCKINNEY/OUR COMMUNITY Jamie and Matt Skovran are teachers with Danville District 118. Both are looking forward to the beginning of a new school year. Matt & Jamie Skovran Teachers miss face-to-face time with students BY CAROL ROEHM [email protected] Married Danville District 118 teachers Matt and Jamie Skovran said the most difficult part of the COVID-19 pandemic is not being able to interact with their students face-to-face. “We get our energy from the kids,” said Matt, who has taught for 17 years in the district. “The hardest part for us teachers is not having that connection; that constant flow of back and forth is gone.” Matt has been the Project Lead the Way teacher at South View Upper Elementary School for the last 12 years after teaching at North Ridge Middle School for about five years. Jamie has taught high school level 24 OUR COMMUNITY 2020 courses for six years at Kenneth D. Bailey Academy. Before that, she taught for 12 years at South View. “I miss hearing the stories from the kids, even if they are just telling me what they did over the weekend,” Matt said. “I miss hearing the chatter of a school. “It was eerie when the administrators let us back into the schools in May to pack up,” he said. “It was deathly quiet. We had no closure.” Jamie, who has taught for 16 years in the district, said her alternative education students know they can reach her through Messenger, which five of them did recently. “I told them ‘I love you guys; I miss you guys,’ and they said ‘Love you, too, Mrs. Skovran,’” she said, tearing up. “These are kids I’ve had for four or five years. “We have our home kids, and we have our school kids,” Jamie said. “That’s the hardest part. We miss the kids.” When schools statewide closed abruptly in mid-March, Matt, whose class is predominantly hands-on, said he and some of his South View colleagues who teach math and science developed online coursework that crossed their content areas. “Collectively, as a staff, we came together,” he said. “We made weekly assignments, such as design your own restaurant and design your own zoo. It was all project-based learning.” For example, a weeklong lesson on space travel included math word problems, such as if a spaceship takes off from one place, how long will it take to get to