Just because local students have largely been corralled in online classes for most of the year doesn’t mean teachers haven’t been demonstrating excellence. If anything, virtual instruction has, for many, required an amplification of skill.
To recognize instructors giving it their all throughout the pandemic, two local school districts Newport-Mesa Unified and Huntington Beach Union High recently announced their selections for “Teacher of the Year.”
Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers picked two educators to receive the honor Dennis Ashendorf, who teaches math at Back Bay/Monte Vista High School and Emily Matthews, a sixth-grade teacher at Davis Magnet school.
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Shannon Atkins was in a bicycle accident in 2016 and sustained injuries that hampered her ability to teach math at Fountain Valley High.
“I didn’t walk for a year,” she said. “My doctor wanted me to stay out [of class] for at least three months, and I went back after three weeks. I still have the effects of that bad decision.”
Atkins, who has taught at Fountain Valley since 2009 as part of a 21-year teaching career, was determined not to make the same mistake when coming back to the classroom during the coronavirus pandemic. She said she has an underlying medical condition that makes her at risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Huntington Beach Union adopts all-district scheduling for return to competition [The Orange County Register]
Feb. 9 Huntington Beach Union High School District is staying local as its begins the return to competition.
The six-school group has settled on a district-only schedule for boys and girls cross country at least at the start and plans to open Season 2 with a similar strategy for sports approved for competition in the purple and red tiers, district athletic director Jim Perry said on Monday, Feb. 8.
Cross country in the only Season 1 sport approved by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for competition amid the most restrictive, purple tier, which blankets most counties in the state, including Orange County. The purple tier signifies widespread risk for conronavirus in the state’s monitoring system.
As coronavirus case rates continue to drop in Orange County, students in Huntington Beach have made their way back to campuses for the first time in weeks.
Huntington Beach Union High School District marked the start of the second semester Tuesday with a return to a hybrid learning model. Students had been distance learning exclusively for about a month, since Jan. 4.
Huntington Beach City School District and Ocean View School District also returned to their hybrid models on Monday.
“It was wonderful to see them return in their hybrid schedules, returning and learning in classrooms with their teachers,” OVSD Board of Trustees President Patricia Singer said. “It’s always good to have the kids back in their classrooms . We’re happy to see that the [COVID-19] rates go in the right direction, and we’re committed to keeping in this hybrid schedule and consistency as long as possible.”
Orange County students plan to strike in support of teachers
Huntington Beach High School students strike for teachers
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - A group of high school students from the Huntington Beach Union High School District has organized a strike after they say teachers aren’t being given the option to continue the second semester with distanced learning. This is basically students not attending their zoom classes, however in order to do it in a responsible way we are emailing our teachers for work beforehand just to make sure we aren’t striking for the wrong reasons. We’re doing this just to prove our point that we stand with our teachers in this sense, said Huntington Beach High School Junior Sam Shaw.