When teachers and students return to their classrooms, they could be making up for more than the few months that they missed when schools closed to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Samantha LaFleur is graduating with her Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction this spring and researched the impact of distance learning on the achievement gap among students.
“I looked at other pandemics and disasters to see how students fared through those and what to expect when we get back to school,” she says. “For instance, after Katrina, even though students may have only missed a semester, it still took them two years to catch up.
“Understanding how this impacts my classes guides what I choose to do with them in the future.”
LaFleur says her capstone is one of a series of opportunities she’s had to apply actionable lessons and research to her classroom while developing a better understanding of her students.
LaFleur had been teaching for five years when she decided to pursue her master’s degree. She says she wanted a program that would allow her to continue teaching full time and would fit her long-term goals of earning her doctorate and guiding social studies curriculum at a district level.
She says she chose UL ˾’s online master’s program because it offered the opportunity for more than a degree along with its flexibility. LaFleur was able to make coursework meaningful by using her classroom as research.
“You could explore what you wanted to do within the parameters of the assignments,” she says. “I’ve learned more about how to work with my students and meet their needs.”
LaFleur teaches third-grade reading and social studies at S.J. Montgomery to a diverse student population. She says courses like Diversity for the Progressive Educator, EDCI 570, gave her a new perspective on how to design a curriculum for her students.
“I have a large Spanish-speaking population, and I was able to look at the curriculum and how to best support their learning,” she says. “I always felt like, ‘oh, that was something I can use in my classroom.’ It was all real-life situations.”
The interplay between classroom and coursework was one of the elements that made earning her graduate degree manageable, LaFleur says, along with accelerated 8-week courses.
“I used what I already had to fit the classes,” she says. “I never felt overwhelmed. I liked that it was two classes a semester, but the classes didn’t overlap so you could focus on one class at a time.”
LaFleur plans to return to the classroom as soon as she’s able to continue applying the insights she’s gained before looking for more specialized instructional strategist roles.