The 2020-21 school year is shaping up to be one of the most unusual in the history of American public education.
Not only did the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) force closure of all public schools in California effective March 16, 2020, but the absence of a vaccine and the continuing lack of widespread testing in the United States means that students at SSFUSD and in California may have to remain in distance learning through the end of December 2020.
Despite these challenges, Sinead Nelson, Scott Amiton, and Sarah Nasr each decided to join SSFUSD as new teachers for the 2020-21 school year.
Nelson is a physical education (P.E.) teacher at El Camino High, who is still working on her teaching credential at Notre Dame de Namur University.
All her classes are virtual, and she plans to call upon her experience as a student of distance learning to inform her work as a practitioner of virtual P.E.
“Ultimately, at this point everyone is online everywhere we go,” said Nelson. “The world we’re teaching in and the world we’re existing in now is very different. I like the flexibility that comes with distance learning. Being virtual—we can kind of play it by ear a little bit more, and I can cater a little bit more to what the students need.”
A seventh grade math teacher at Alta Loma Middle School, Amiton has 18 years of teaching experience. He has lived abroad since 2005, working as a math and science teacher at international private schools in cities like Bangkok schools like the American School of Bombay in Mumbai and the International School of Beijing.
“We were evacuated from India, and we continued teaching virtually with the school we were at through June,” Amiton said.
After returning to his native Portland, Oregon, Amiton struck out for the San Francisco Bay Area and decided to make SSFUSD his home for the 2020-21 school year.
Like Amiton, Nasr has also been in education for 18 years.
She hails from Orange County and was most recently a science teacher at a technology-based private school in Southern California.
When schools in California and across the country began shutting down on March 16, Nasr whose former school had already been G-suite certified for several years, quickly reconfigured her curriculum for distance learning and was teaching students remotely within two days.
She said getting hired as a freshman biology teacher at South San Francisco High is a dream come true for her, and she is undaunted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve done kung fu for 11 years, and something that our master [sifu] taught us. . .is to take a risk every day, that if you’re ever feeling comfortable, there’s a problem, and so it’s really ingrained in me that if there’s a struggle, you should be a heat-seeking missile TO the struggle, not away from the struggle, so COVID or no COVID—with all due respect—bring it on.”