GREAT FALLS — With students at home, learning in the classroom looks a bit different.
At C.M. Russell High School, chemistry teacher Christopher Hibbert has been helping students out by putting up online experiments.
He's been working at CMR for more than 14 years now and says they teach to build relationships first. "I come from a school where our motto is relationships leads to success. I do believe all at CMR work hard; in fact, great falls public schools to make relationships with these kids," said Hibbert.
But he had a plan in place before the pandemic sent students home: "So a week before anything happened, I got them a Zoom number (video conference) so they could join in on the class. We just kind of kept business as usual and kept at the same meeting time. Visited on Zoom, and that led me to online lectures and online labs."
This idea started as a way to engage students without actually physically being at school. "That they needed more hands-on without being able to be hands-on. The only way to do that would be to show the run-through of the lab. So basically, I did the lab for my honors class, and it ends up being the favorite for the students throughout the year, and it was just kind of a bummer for the students that they missed out on it. I didn't want them to miss out on it. So I grabbed all the stuff and brought it home and got geared up."
Hibbert says he misses his students: "A lot, yes, that's my favorite thing about this job, getting to know these kids, spending that time with them. You can still learn this way, but you don't learn the same. You don't build a sense of community."
Most teachers are on call, and you can reach out to them whenever you need that extra help with homework.
