El Paso teacher, 10 students transition to home schooling due to pandemic
EL PASO, Texas -- For ten students, their parents and one teacher, the pandemic forced them to transition from traditional schooling to homeschooling.
"I was intimidated but we just jumped in with both feet,” Victoria Perez said. “With all of us that's probably like 46 feet or something jumping in."
Known to her students as Ms. P, Victoria Perez was going to sit teaching out for this year due to the pandemic, but some former families she taught didn’t want to lose her as a teacher, so they started a virtual home schooling program.
"They came in like little babies that were turning like 3 or 4 and walked out these big old confident kids so I think something was right,” Perez said.
"I was skeptical at first, every parent, every social media group you could get involved in were saying oh okay this year is going to be a recessive year, they're going to go back a grade level,” J Beeman said. “So we were expecting that but we were pleasantly surprised that our girls were at or above where they should've been."
J is a firefighter and his wife a nurse, so they didn't want to put other children at risk of getting Covid-19 by sending their kids to school.
"Ms. P was the answer and at the time we were just dumbfounded at how we were going to create that environment for them to be able to learn,” Beeman said.
Ms. P sent out the curriculum at the start of the year and what resources they would need. They had a 30 minute lesson Tuesday to Thursday, that ranged in phonics, maths and science, spanish and religion studies. J puts the success of the year down to how easy it was for parents to follow Ms. P as well as the concentrated pockets of learning.
"I think she was able to grasp their attention, give them the information that needed to be done and guide us in the right direction,” Beeman said.
"If you can see that little child and their beautiful parents that are so in love with them becoming and growing, you can't help but connect with them,” Perez said.
