Because of the covid-19 pandemic, McDonald County elementary school art and music teachers have had to change from teaching in their own classrooms to teaching on the go.
At Southwest City Elementary School, music teacher Stephana Wilkerson explained that students in all grades used to come to her classroom for music, but now only seventh and eighth grades come to her classroom and she visits all the other grades in their classrooms. This cuts down on students moving around the building and having to have multiple seating charts for reporting in case of exposure to covid-19, she said.
Recently, Wilkerson visited a fifth-grade classroom with "cardio desk drumming" on her agenda. The students stood at their desks with pool noodles in their hands and watched a video with music, following the motions of the person in the video. They jumped, drummed on their desk with the pool noodles, and did other moves.
"It lets them get out of their seats and get moving and improves their focus," Wilkerson said. "I enjoy teaching music and I wanted something for them to look forward to."
In a neighboring classroom, art teacher Vicki Potter was starting a weaving project with fifth graders.
She said she has seven traveling art carts she rotates through, and she also has a teacher cart that holds supplies such as her laptop, paper, pencils, markers, etc. It is her traveling desk, she said.
"There's a lot of preparation, thinking ahead," to get everything she needs on the cart, she said.
She was starting weaving with most grades at Southwest City. Fifth grade was going to weave straws; fourth grade was going to weave paper plates; third grade was going to weave cups and second grade was going to weave paper. In the older grades, she uses looms, she said.
Potter said teaching out of a cart is very different, but all of the art teachers in the district that are doing it meet on a Zoom meeting and discuss what is working and what can be improved.
She added, "It gives me a chance to think on my toes" by trying to implement the same projects in a different way.