Teachers are answering the call, despite the overwhelming difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

One such educator is Cassandra Dearring.

As many educators, Dearring is currently teaching students at the sixth-grade level at Wilson Foundation Academy via Zoom classes, Monday thru Friday, doing three different groups and classes online in conjunction with Google classroom and also articles on Reworks.org

“Reworks.org helps them with their reading comprehension and English Language Arts (ELA), science and social studies and assignments in Google classroom,” Dearring said. “They also are able to participate in virtual field trips each week anyway around the world, which they are able to experience different cultures and systems.”

It’s totally different and a challenge, because at first all students didn’t have the technology piece to get online or their parents were at work and they were unable to use their parents cell phone, but now the district has provided laptops for all kids in the district per grade 6-12 and currently, they are supplying chrome books for students in grades 3-5 as well, she said. “This is where all kids are online and able to interact with their teachers and classmates.

“We have grade level meetings each week as well. If the parents call on Saturday or Sunday. Whatever is needed. We do the schedule to meet their needs,” she continued.

“Teaching is something I always did as a child growing up. My mom’s is my inspiration, she instilled in my siblings and myself educational importance and life skill values, while working three jobs. So, as one of the elder siblings, I was home helping my younger brothers and sisters and other kids in our neighborhood with reading and writing and math at a young age. It was something, I always like to do. It became second nature to me.”

Dearring graduated from East High School. However, she did not go straight to college and instead chose marriage.

“My husband was in the military,” she noted. “Once he finished his career, I went back to school at Monroe Community College (MCC) and earned my associate degree, before going to SUNY Brockport to earn a bachelor in education and afterward earning a master degree from SUNY Brockport in education as well and a master from St. John Fisher in Administration, before I began teaching K-6 in the RCSD in 2001 at School Number 45.”

“I really love working with kids. I look at all of the kids at my school as if they are my own,” she accentuated. “And I want them to get the same quality education my seven daughters have gotten. And I like looking at their faces and looking forward to them coming back five or six years later upon graduation and them telling me the impact I made on their lives.”

“It makes you say wow,” she absorbs. “Some things you thought they weren’t paying attention too or didn’t get, they utterly understand and that just does something deep down, because you like wow, to God be the glory. Because I want all the kids to be productive when they graduate. I do not teach them at the grade they are at. I prepare them for life,” Dearring emphasized. “I give them lifelong skills on how to be successful as I would like for my own children.”

Article by: Author Rodney Brown, executive director of Brown Publishing LLC and Southwest Tribune Newspaper