A Most Unusual Time
A Second Term in Unprecedented Times Georgia’s TOTY Shares Her Thoughts on the Pandemic, Reopening Schools and Serving Another Year as the State’s Top Educator By Scotty Brewington
T
racey Pendley — only the second Atlanta Public Schools teacher to win the state’s top honor of Teacher of the Year — is now adding another distinction to her résumé. As a result of this most unusual time, Pendley is serving a second term as the state’s top educator. Pendley will continue in this role until a new award winner is selected in spring of 2021. (This isn’t the first time a teacher has held the TOTY distinction for two consecutive terms. Catherine S. Pittman of Glynn County served back-to-back in 1995-96 as the state shifted its program timeline to align with the national program.) We recently caught-up with Pendley — a fourth grade teacher at Atlanta’s Burgess-Peterson Academy who also serves on Gov. Brian Kemp’s K-12 Restart Work Group — and asked her how she plans to navigate her role during these unusual times, what she is hearing from her fellow educators, and insights from serving on the state’s school reopening committee. “There has been a lot of concern circling around digital connectivity and our
students’ access to technology — the gaps across the state and how we get devices and hot spots to those children,” said Pendley. “We have found that it wasn’t just students having trouble connecting during the shutdown, but teachers as well. It doesn’t come down to income level as much as it does location. Highspeed internet simply isn’t available in many communities.” In May, Gov. Kemp and State Superintendent Richard Woods announced the creation of six K-12 Restart Working Groups to plan for the 2020-21 school year in the midst of COVID-19. The groups include teachers, school district staff, public health officials and representatives from other state agencies including non-profits. There are groups focused on school meals, distance and professional learning, technology, mental health, supplemental learning, and facilities, equipment and health guidelines. Pendley serves on the committee focused on distance and professional learning. “In Georgia, we had 41 percent of students in rural communities picking up physical packets because they didn’t have access to in the internet. We can’t just rely on packets,” she said. On Pendley’s committee, the ‘We have an focus has been on how to make opportunity to virtual learning engaging for all students. completely reimagine “We are looking at this as an how we teach students opportunity to think bigger, better and out-of-the-box,” Pendley said. and what we expect “The expertise brought to the table from them. One of has been outstanding. I am pleased to see how much the voices of eduthe biggest pieces of cators really mattered and that our advice I give is not to voices were considered. We spent many hours over Zoom really hashfocus on test scores — ing out the details about who will focus on growth.’ benefit, who we are missing and who is falling through the cracks.”
20 PAGE ONE
‘We Learned a lot in the Spring’ A positive change this year, Pendley says, is that teachers in Atlanta Public Schools will have three weeks of preplanning as opposed to the typical one week before students begin school. The goal of this extended planning time is to allow teachers to connect individually with students on their class rosters and to begin to form relationships with them before the first day of school. During this time, teachers can also assess students’ connectivity and access to technology. “We learned a lot in the spring. While I was on those Zoom calls, I got to see which students were having to speak through their mom’s phone while she was running out to work and what kinds of assignments they were able to work on,” said Pendley. “We are creative. We found ways to provide resources, and many teachers delivered learning activities to students. I ran a book drive at my school and in June, I was able to deliver 140 bags of books to students at August/September 2020
