The other day I had a chance to catch up with Mr. Noe, who teaches design tech and more at Lakes. I asked him why did you chose to become a teacher.

“I like working with like the younger generation and coming from an industry a lot of younger people coming in and not really having the experience they needed, so I think it’s a lot of fun, so being able to teach most students to expect what industry is and everything.” 

When asked his thoughts on the effects of coronavirus on education, he replied,  “For my class as you know it is a lot of hands on, so I think it takes a lot of it away from hands on knowledge and working with your hands over online I am kind of like that too, I like grabbing things and working with them instead of just watching it or being told about it. So, I think it affects a lot of the students trying to work with their hands and now just seeing how things work over the computer.”  

I do feel the same way especially since I am in his class and I don’t get to experience the hands-on learning like I did last year. Online classes can be difficult, especially for these types of classes where you would normally be working with things in a hands on manner. I then asked “what are the challenges you or the school faced when you learned that everything would be on-line to start the year.” He replied that “The challenges I face is being able to sit here all day.  I used to be able to walk around and work on things with students, you know moving around. To sit here all day is extremely hard.  School wise the whole school is struggling because everyone wants to be back in the building doing face to face learning” 

I understand where he is coming from. I myself kind of miss going to school, but the other half of me likes doing online. I do understand the struggle he and the school goes through trying to teach through a computer.

The last question I asked was what are the pro s and cons to teaching online? He replied “The cons you know getting rid of the hands on learning.  It’s way harder for hands on learners, you’re just one dimensional with teaching online. So that’s hard. Just being able to get that teamwork as a class. Teamwork is basically an essential skill that is needed to work with other people, and it’s very hard to get that online. The pros, I mean that’s a hard one actually… I think the pros is a lot of students can work at their own pace, they can get their own information and kind of go over it at a time frame that feels comfortable for them and kind of go back and go over it so they can replay it if they don’t get something. That’s actually a pro.” 

I totally agree with Mr. Noe, there will always be pros and cons, even though this may be tough for a lot of teachers it may be easier for some students. They can possibly get better grades since they can always go back and kind of review for questions and answers, and I do feel like it’s an easier access to get in touch with their teachers.  

Mr. Noe, like other teachers is doing his best to teach online and we are thankful for him.