Working Together While Apart

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Originally appears in the Summer 2021 issue.

By Aislinn Benfield

When I wrote “Pollinating Hope”¹ in the Fall 2019 issue of Green Teacher, there was no way I could have foreseen that the world would change unimaginably in the next six months, taking with it my view of delivery and priorities in education and extracurricular activities. At the time, I was happily basking in the success of my extracurricular environmental club’s native plant pollinator garden, which we had added to our local community the prior spring. I was excited to see what opportunities the 2019–2020 school year would bring for the club in the larger community. Looking back now, it’s almost hard to believe that only a year and a half has passed.

Like many teachers, my brick-and-mortar school moved in the spring of 2020 to remote and, eventually, hybrid delivery. And like many teachers, I was at first frustrated and overwhelmed by the abrupt switch in educational methods and the departure from everything I was familiar with in my teaching career. But I dutifully persisted and eventually came to appreciate the flexibility and possibilities of online learning, to the point that I made the decision to change jobs and teach online permanently.