Doing Whatever It Takes: A Changed Perspective

<strong>READ THE BLOG POST |</strong> <a href="https://www.ohea.org/doing-whatever-it-takes/">Check out Julie Holderbaum's <em>Doing Whatever it Takes: A Changed Perspective</em> post on <em>Voices of Change</em> here</a><p> </p><p><strong>Featured guest: </strong></p><ul><li>Julie Holderbaum, High School English Teacher, Minerva, Ohio<ul><li>Julie Holderbaum has taught high school English for 25 years. She currently teaches 9th and 11th grade at Minerva High School in Minerva, Ohio. She is a frequent contributor to OEA’s<a href="https://www.ohea.org/voices-of-change"> Voices of Change</a> blog and has also been published by Plunderbund, Education Week, and the Washington Post’s education blog, Answer Sheet. She lives with her husband and daughter and the family’s chocolate Lab, who keeps her sane when yoga doesn’t </li></ul> </li></ul><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p>"There was a lot of fear springing from the unknown. We didn't know how long it was going to last, we didn't know how long it was going to be, people were getting laid off and things were shutting down. And we had a week to get ready for teaching online and none of us had ever done that before, so that was very stressful. And, early on, I figured out, ok, you're going to lose your mind if you just keep functioning the way you're functioning."<ul> <li>1:15 - Teaching in-person five days a week all year</li> <li>1:45 - Life in a small, rural community</li> <li>2:45 - The challenges of having a large portion of the school out at any time for quarantines</li> <li>3:30 - The toll the pandemic has taken: "It was just school all the time and therefore stress all the time."</li> <li>5:45 - Setting boundaries, exercising more, and reading books for fun.  </li> <li>6:15 - Concerns about adjusting lesson plans for individual in-person work in the fall while facing concerns about the virus</li> <li>7:05 -<em> "Even though my schedule had to returned to normal, I had to set some limits. Otherwise, I knew I was going to burnout really fast."</em>