22 Wednesday, March 25, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon SOUTH KOREA: Sisters native and her family are educators abroad Continued from page 3 Sisters School District, is a Health and P.E. instructor in the middle years program, grades 7-10. In an interview via email, the McNairs talked about their experience with govern- ment response, lockdown, testing, school closures and online teaching, while also offering words of wisdom and encouragement to their friends here in Sisters who are beginning to experience the same changes in everyday life due to the virus. Nugget: When did you first discover that this virus was going to change the way of life in South Korea? Where did information come from? McNairs: We started hearing things about the virus a few weeks after Christmas. We have many teaching friends in Shanghai as we taught at Concordia International School before coming to South Korea. We were hearing their stories of being on Chinese New Year and not being able to return to work in Shanghai due to the outbreak. In the beginning of February is when it started to hit South Korea in Daegu, which is south of Seoul. With how efficient public transit is and the number of people that travel within Korea on a regular basis we had a feeling it was only a matter of time. The Ministry of Education and Government provided most of our updates along with alerts we would get on our phones daily, which tell you where cases were occurring. Nugget: What did you witness as the government9s response to the arrival of the virus for you in Seoul? McNairs: The govern- ment took action seriously and quickly. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) and our school were in daily contact about recommendations for how to proceed daily. Testing was implemented quickly and efficiently with many testing sites available and mobile testing also became an option. Nugget: What was it like for you once the schools shut down for you and your fam- ily? What are you doing with your own kids? McNairs: As a few International schools shut- down we had the oppor- tunity to meet as a staff to plan what our virtual roll- out would look like for the upcoming week. We did not initially know this would last longer than a week or two. Fortunately, we live on cam- pus, so our kids are able to get together with other staff kids daily for activities, learn- ing, and general support. We were able to then pour more effort into virtual learning seeing our kids were taken care of, which we know is a daily challenge for families. Nugget: How are you dealing with your jobs? Can you explain how you are delivering education to your students? How is that work- ing? Do you have any sugges- tions for us here in Sisters? McNairs: Virtual learn- ing is dynamic and challeng- ing as it9s not just putting it out to students and being done, but constantly evaluat- ing feedback from students and troubleshooting different platforms. As time goes on, procedures change, but as you become comfortable with one method it9s good to experi- ment with other methods to reach a variety of learn- ers. Through programs like Google classroom, Flipgrid, Seesaw, Zoom, Google Meets, we9ve been able to reach students here in South Korea and around the world. Days are spent collaborating with colleagues while still delivering lessons and giving feedback, which would not be possible without using multi- ple platforms. One thing that has made this transition easier is that we were already using Google Classroom and Seesaw on a daily basis, so kids were familiar with where to ini- tially access information and seek feedback. Our advice to schools in Oregon trying to figure out how to do online educa- tion is to not