Editor’s note: In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, Bonner County Daily Bee has chosen to spotlight a few of our local educators.

SANDPOINT — Prior to the viral spread of COVID-19, Physical Science, Algebra I and Honors Science teacher Dalton Hawkins at Sandpoint High School was already catching stride with distance learning to accommodate student travel. He was in the middle of making videos for a student that had planned a month-long trip to Thailand before the pandemic forced teachers to move to a distance learning model. “It just happened to fall during this period as well, so I actually had a little bit of a head start on creating those videos,” he said.

Hawkins has been juggling working for three subjects, working from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily to hold virtual office hours, draw up review packets and create new videos. Though the workload has increased, he has been working together with other physical science teachers to film and direct a universal lesson plan.

“Normally right now we would be finishing with gravity and moving on to energy transformations, but we are having to slow everything way down,” Hawkins said. “By not demonstrating, it’s hard for kids to get it, it’s hard to communicate that without physically being present.”

Hawkins said his class is only getting about a week’s worth of assignments in a two-week period to avoid burnout, which many teachers were fearful of after overloading work the week students returned from spring break. Some teachers without a background in online training initially struggled to adjust, but Hawkins’ familiarity as a computer science teacher allowed him to get creative with his teaching style.

“The first day I was in front of Hogwarts (on Zoom),” Hawkins said. “The next day I had my favorite esports team logo up and then I had a student request one day for a unicorn background, so I put the unicorn background one day.”

He’s also been collecting USB flash drives from his computer science students to check their work and provide feedback. He said the hardest course to teach outside of the classroom is math.

“We are definitely feeling that one right now,” Hawkins said. “We are suddenly losing a quarter of that time, so it’s definitely going to draw out our review that we normally do. The first month is typically reviewed, like okay let’s get the summer cobwebs out. Well now we have the April, May and June cobwebs that we have to clean out.”

Though Hawkins said teachers could make the distance learning model work for a long time, there are many disadvantages to the loss of face-to-face instruction.

“It is tempting to say we want to do this online distance learning a lot for kids but I really don’t feel like it’s a complete substitute for education,” Hawkins said. “I didn’t get into teaching for giving assignments and grading them. It’s having that interaction with the students and hearing that random story about how they made snickerdoodle cookies last night whenever we are talking about gravity.”

Without emotional cues from students, Hawkins said it has been difficult to set the pace for his classes. Another struggle for distance learning has been the lack of technology available to all students. He used to provide all resources necessary to his students in the classroom, but he is no longer assuming that his students have access to laptops or cameras.

“We are trying to say, ‘What is something we can reasonably assume that everyone can get?’” He said. His class has started making comic strips and keeping science journals instead.

Despite the challenges faced in the past few months, Hawkins is hopeful that the education system will embrace some of the recent changes for more efficient schooling.

“That’s definitely something that’s been on my mind as we are going through this is how is this going to change education as a whole and I really am hopeful that it’s for the better in saying, ‘OK, we can work with this stuff,” He said. “How do we make it so it’s more accessible for more people? How do we have everything equitable, so the kid that doesn’t have internet at home is able to have the same experience and learn the same amount as the kid that has that high speed internet connection?’”

Hawkins said the COVID-19 pandemic actually forced himself to get internet connection in his home. He said his first-year teaching experience was in a small Alaskan village of 250 people, with no way out by boat or plane. This, he said, is what fully prepared him for the stay-home orders happening nationwide.

“I am actually a little bit trained in this kind of whole isolation idea,” Hawkins said. “I am used to this … in all reality I have more internet than I did there and everything is more accessible, like grocery stores so I am doing really well.”

Hawkins recommends that teachers invest in a hobby during this trying time. He said his next project is going to be building a beehive.

But, like most teachers, no distraction will keep him from missing his students.

“They are definitely feeling it in terms of this isn’t normal,” Hawkins said. “I really want to be able to work at the school with the students again in a time where it’s safe to do so.”

This article is in support of Teacher Appreciation Week 2020. To send a thank you to Dalton Hawkins email Dalton.Hawkins@lposd.org.

Aly De Angelus can be reached by email at adeangelus@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @AlyDailyBee.