Being a teacher is not always an easy task, especially during this pandemic. One teacher who is doing a great job juggling being not only a teacher, but also the yearbook coordinator and a mom, is Mrs. Nancy Holden-Nims.

Since Mrs. Holden-Nims doesn’t have face-to-face interaction with her students anymore, she uses apps such as Zoom. By using Zoom, she still gets the chance to see her students through the screen and help them learn to the best of their abilities. It may be harder to learn this way, but we students sometimes forget it is just as equally hard to teach this way.

“Teaching online is quite interesting. Like everyone, I’ve explored so many online tools; some are excellent and some are more complicated to figure out. Zoom is so far my favorite for group meetings. It has great functionality,” Mrs. Holden-Nims said.

Not being able to see your students is hard when you’re used to seeing them every day. Not only does Mrs. Holden-Nims miss her students, but she also misses all the other fun school activities.

“My least favorite thing about online learning is the loss of connection with my students. I miss the time between classes when you have a few minutes to chat with students or seeing everyone doing the things they love like choir, band, sports and crazy things that happen when we’re all together,” Mrs. Holden-Nims said.

In addition to teaching, Mrs. Holden-Nims has to coordinate the yearbook and be a mom. Both of these things can be challenging, as she has to try to keep children busy and try to plan a yearbook about the incomplete school year.

“Honestly, I haven’t found that much extra time since we’ve gone online. But, since my own children don’t have evening activities to run off to anymore, it has been nice to have family dinners. Yearbook has been the most challenging aspect of online learning. How do we finish a yearbook when there are no spring on-campus events?” Mrs Holden-Nims said.

Luckily, the yearbook staff have had many great ideas and are excited to overcome the adversity.

“The class environment for the yearbook staff is quite unique. We become very close, and our normal classroom environment usually includes lots of music and candy. Recreating that environment over the internet is next to impossible. We feed off of each other’s energy and ideas…The staff had the great idea early on of our virtual spirit week, and we’ve been working hard to capture unique online learning activities and other ‘events.’ We think everyone will be happy with the way we are preserving this historic moment in time,” Mrs. Holden-Nims said.

There are ups and downs to online learning, and it isn’t easy for everyone. However, having great teachers who are pushing you to your full potential during this trying time is truly a blessing, and we need to thank them…Thank you Mrs. Holden-Nims!