What it's like to be a distance learning teacher: Bais Yaakov

Here’s to the educators—on a moment’s notice, they completely transformed how they do their jobs to make sure our kids’ Jewish education didn’t miss a beat. We wanted to know: How are they handling this? What are they learning? How can we help them? For the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing interviews with teachers at our seven partner schools. 

Dr. Dina Drubach, ninth- and tenth-grade anatomy and physiology teacher at Bais Yaakov, has enjoyed watching her students thrive with the added independence brought on by distance learning.  

How has the transition to distance learning been for your class? 

The girls have mastered the ability to “network” very well. They like to talk! So that was a challenge in-person, where I have roughly 43 minutes to teach. The networking can eat up 12-15 minutes! On Zoom, we only have 35 minutes and I’m able to use almost the full time to teach. From my perspective, it’s actually been more focused. 

But lesson planning takes more time. Trying to find a medium that works best for your kids is a little more challenging, but I think for the most part the girls are willing and open enough to go with this. 

Anatomy and physiology must be pretty hands on. Has that been difficult to teach over Zoom? 

We’ve been able to find some really nice interactive slide presentations. The girls have to read the slides, then click and drag. We just finished the digestive system. First they teach you the digestive system, then you have to interactively add the labels. I do miss the hands-on things, like you said, like dissection. I don’t know if the girls really miss that—they're half and half.  

How have your students handled the transition? 

I think we’re creatures of socialization—it’s necessary for us as humans. For the most part the girls have done well. These girls will find a way to socialize. They asked to do their work in pairs over Facetime, and as long as their parents are okay with it, I'm fine with it. It’s interesting how they’ll find a way to socialize. But they are happy and they’re getting their assignments done. 

One student wrote to me that she had an incident with one of her siblings—they were deflating; mom and dad weren’t there. My class was starting.  She took it upon herself to say, ‘I’m going to miss class to take him out for a walk and get to whatever is bothering him.’ It was empowering that she had the courage to write that for me and do that difficult thing. 

I have to be understanding, parents have to be understanding, siblings have to be understanding. We all have to take turns— and right now everyone is taking a turn.  

How have you felt supported by the Jewish community? 

Nothing stopped. My son is in the yeshiva, and even we were taken aback by how they understood the importance of the boys’ continued learning, and as safe as they could, they wanted to allow the boys to distance learn—they did whatever they could do to keep that going. Virus or no virus, we don’t skip a beat. As for the girls in Bais Yaakov, we too, followed and resumed learning.  

What lessons from this time will you bring back to the classroom? 

I’ll remind the girls how powerful they are as individuals, and how well their mind works when they’re so focused. If they didn’t have the confidence before that you could do anything alone...Boy oh boy, can they do it alone.