The Student News Site of Souderton Area High School

The Arrowhead

The Arrowhead

The Student News Site of Souderton Area High School

The Arrowhead

The Student News Site of Souderton Area High School

The Arrowhead

The Arrowhead

Quarantined workers at Home

By working at home, Souderton teachers, along with many others, are still working in lockdown with new hours to continue earning a salary and keep the world running.

Due to the pandemic, Souderton teachers, along with many others, are working from home to continue earning a salary and keep the world running under lockdown.
Among these workers is English teacher Grace Clancy. According to Clancy, she said that she misses teaching face to face since “the students and coworkers are the heart of this career!”
The face to face interaction is one of the many things that workers are not able to have because it can have deadly side effects. Because of this, the work ethic of workers has been negatively affected.
“My work ethic is still strong, but it has been negatively affected because one of the joys of teaching is interacting with students,” Clancy said.
The negative effects of quarantine on work ethic have been the same for French teacher Sally Cushmore.
“It is harder for me to stick to a schedule and get things done in a timely manner because there really isn’t a reason to stick to a schedule anymore,” Cushmore said.
While the scheduling issues are still there, Cushmore said that she has been researching more and allowing that research to become part of the Schoology lesson plans.
The technological part of teaching has allowed Souderton teachers to branch out to different video chat software for meetings. According to Cushmore, the transition to technology has been easy since “everyone at SAHS is really great about helping each other with new technology.”
For production support specialist Austen Sparenga, the transition to technology was the same with his team using programs like Microsoft Teams and Skype for meetings. According to Sparenga, online meetings has made it harder to get answers to questions because “while on the Internet everything is based on context and I don’t understand it.”
The new workload in quarantine has also made it harder for Sparenga to gain questions from those with more experience. Before quarantine began, he was in a different position but since he switched over to the new position, the workload has been heavier.
“As of right now, since the federal rate dropped to the lowest point it’s been in 20 years, we’ve seen a lot more loans in our pipeline,” Sparenga said.
The increased workload and decreased access to help have made it harder for Sparenga to get started on work in the morning. Since the process of heading to the office to work with others that he trained with has been taken away, Sparenga has been ready to get back to work in the office with his coworkers.
This readiness to interact with coworkers again is the same for high school business teacher Maria Halteman. She has missed interacting with students and coworkers in a classroom setting but it trying to make the best of it with using programs like Microsoft Teams and Zoom.
According to Halteman, she was ready for the workload since “[her] last job was a work from home job so [she] was aware of what the changes would be and the challenges with balancing home and work.”

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