Photo essay by Samantha Miranda
This pandemic has affected everyone, from restaurants to schools, to families.
When the pandemic first started, students were excited that they didn’t have to do school for two weeks. On the other hand, the teachers were in panic, they didn’t know how they were going to teach the students anymore, they were concerned for them learning something this year. They started looking for resources and different types of activities to do with the students.
I talked to Los Angeles teacher Xochitl Miranda. She is a teacher for preschoolers. She has been teaching for over 15 years, she has a passion to teach and wants to see her students strive for better. I started asking her how this pandemic has affected her and she said: “it’s been difficult to learn all this new technology.”
She found it hard. She went more in-depth, saying that sometimes she saw in her students’ faces that they were bored and didn’t like the new change. She started to find new activities and new things to introduce to her students so they could stay interested.
Ms. Miranda wanted her kids to have fun and not be bored of learning.
“I have missed being in the classroom with my kids and see them play and sing with me,” she shared with me. “It has been a change but I think I am getting the hang of it.”
Ms. Miranda wishes she could go back and teach like normal. Over this period of a year she has been able to learn more about Zoom, and new websites she uses. She keeps her students more entertained and focused than she did before, and the kids are starting to understand more how to use the websites.
What Ms. Miranda has noticed is that many of her students have a small working space or have to share the computer with a sibling. These families have learned to work together and help each other out.
After a long day of work Ms.Miranda still has to do her paperwork. She has to write about what she did with each of her students. 
Later in the day she gives her students homework that they have to work on for the rest of the time. This student was following along to a reading and had to explain to their parents what had happened.
