As a teacher who has personally been in all three of those situations, I want to share my experiences and give an insider look on the pros and cons of each potential choice.

In-Person Education

First of all, we have the tried and true method of in-person teaching, which also may perhaps be the most controversial method in our current situation.

Many may try to argue against this, proclaiming that is the least safe of all these options due to the difficulties in enforcing social distancing, sanitizing, and mask wearing with children.

However, when effective precautions are consistently enforced and positively modeled by all staff in the building, I have found in-person teaching to still be the most effective and rewarding method for properly teaching my students.

Fully Virtual School

On the flip slide, we have schools that go fully virtual for the sake of ensuring that everyone (teachers and students alike) can in theory be safely quarantined at home whilst proceeding with daily learning.

While the idea of teaching or learning from home in your pajamas all day may sound quite alluring at first, the reality is that this is perhaps the most difficult method for teaching during the pandemic.

This is due to the many variables that need to be accounted for. Things such as home environments, parent work schedules, reliable Wi-Fi access, and the potential for students to outright stop participating if there is no enforcement from their parents. These can all create challenges to learning in a virtual environment.

Combination of Both

Finally, we have a combination of the two models mentioned above. My definition of “combination” in this case being several students learning in person while others choose virtual online education.

The teacher is now faced with the dilemma of trying to ensure the students learning from home are receiving the same education as the students in the classroom. This goal is made all the more difficult by the fact that all lessons do not translate to virtual learning as easily as others.

While providing families with a choice is wonderful, the added workload of trying to equally accommodate two groups of students can at times be a struggle. Regardless of what model your local school follows or what your personal opinions may be on all of this, I am constantly reminded of the famous words of John Lydgate: “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

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The program’s eclectic curriculum integrates marine science, citizen science, and diving science to provide an original “learning through exploration”. This novel program aims to enable and inspire the upcoming generation of ocean and environmental stewards with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive.

Citizen Scientist participants will partake in an array of exciting activities. Most notably, they will experience first-hand a 24-hour undersea habitat experience. Asides from that, participants will be taught about physiology and diving physics, as well as opportunities in oceanography and marine sciences at Citizen Science.

Moreover, participants will engage in multiple hands-on underwater activities like utilizing dive tools to conduct a safe cleanup of coral reefs, as well as performing fish identification. The participants will experience what it’s like to work in microgravity as they engage in these seafloor excursions from their underwater habitat.

The SEA STAR’s Citizen Scientist program is a hybrid education model that combines multiple instructional delivery methods, online learning, and hands-on instruction. After participants have completed all facets of the program, they receive SEA STAR program’s certificate of completion. Moreover, they will receive 3 specialty diving credentials from the Professional Association of Diving Instructions (PADI); including PADI Aquanaut, PADI Underwater Maintenance, and PADI InnerSpace Diver.

The inaugural Citizen Scientist Aquanaut course ran from March 28 to 29, 2020, and was quickly followed by the second from May 30 to 31, 2020. Each course restricted to 6 people that were selected on a first-come basis. Venture Beyond LLC is dedicated to the furtherance of human exploration of Earth and Space through multidisciplinary and innovative educational programs.

If you are interested in the Citizen Scientist Aquanaut Program or any other of their programs, you can visit their website at https://sites.google.com/view/venturesbeyondllc/home for more information.

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