By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
Great Bend High School's journey through the Covid pandemic has been documented in a 20-minute video produced by Dan Heath, the school's digital media teacher, and his students. The video features several teachers and staff telling their personal accounts of adjusting to a new way of teaching.
Tim Friess, Great Bend High's principal, remembered how the school year started.
"The first obstacle we had was what we were going to do when the teachers came back," Freiss said. "Everybody had about two weeks to finalize how they were going to teach remote which we've never done before."
The video is titled "Survive, Adapt, Overcome." It documents the unique challenges that the educators faced throughout the school year, including quarantines, teaching remotely, wearing masks, temperature checks and cleaning rooms and desks.
Assistant Principal Randy Wetzel talked about the positive side of connecting with students when they arrived at school each day.
"What I found through that process, it wasn't so much about making sure they had a mask and an ID on," Wetzel recalled. "It was an opportunity to talk to our kids the first thing in the morning, put a smile on their face, ask them how their day was going. Like our wrestlers winning a state championship, they came in the door and that's the first thing they heard was congratulations. I felt that was probably the biggest thing that we did to get our students back in the flow of education, back in the flow of school."
The video was screened by members of the USD 428 Board at a recent lunch meeting. To access the video, click HERE.