WINSTON-SALEM — When the world of education changed virtually overnight, Our Lady of Mercy School first-grade teacher Cindy Bryson rose to the challenge the way she always has: with resourcefulness and love for her students and their families.
From the outset of the pandemic, Bryson got creative with her lesson plans and assignments.
One such assignment was an interdisciplinary research and writing project that asked the students to: visit the National Geographic Kids website; pick out their favorite mammal and do research on it; and write out answers to a series of questions about the animal. She used the program ScreenCastify to give them a personal tutorial of how to navigate the site.
Bryson was thrilled with her students’ work. However, she sensed something was missing. “I realized that my students needed to see me and hear my voice every day,” she said. “So I created videos of me talking with them about different subjects instead of just sending written instructions.”
Bryson also created a special project in celebration of Earth Day in April. She asked the parents to take a picture of their child hugging a tree in their yard, then to send it to her. Using those photos – and Louis Armstrong’s rendition of the song “What a Wonderful World” as the soundtrack – Bryson created a private TikTok video that won rave reviews from the parents.
“My constant mantra was: How can we stay connected even if we have to be apart?” she said. “I soon realized that even creating interactive videos and interdisciplinary projects still wasn’t enough. I needed to see my students.”
That’s when she decided to go to OLM’s principal, Sister Geri Rogers, SSJ, with an unconventional idea.
“I asked Sister, ‘What do you think about me doing home visits? If you’re OK with it, I’ll stay outside and of course maintain proper social distancing. I’ll tell the parents that my visits are completely optional. If someone in the household is or could be compromised, they don’t have to see me,’” she recalled.
Fully confident that she could trust Bryson to take all of the necessary safety precautions, Sister Geri approved the idea.
“It turned out that 100 percent of the parents wanted me to come. I told them that I wanted to teach for a couple of hours each visit – I’ll be outside in the yard, and your child and I will get some 
schoolwork done, and then we’ll take a break and play.”
At student Ava’s home, Bryson taught a math lesson (sitting six feet apart from Ava) on the family’s trampoline in the back yard.
When she visited first-grader Jack at home, Bryson took along two copies of a book entitled “Saving the Sea Turtles” – a copy for her and one for Jack.
“Jack and I read the book. Then I asked Jack some reading comprehension questions, and he wrote his answers on a dry erase board,” Bryson said. “The students loved this exercise!”
So would Bryson say that the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have in some way been an unexpected blessing?
“Yes, I feel a lot closer to my families now – and my students,” she said. “I feel that I know them, really know them. The visits helped me so much, because you don’t really know if a child is actually learning and that their family is doing OK until you can see them in person.”
— Edward Jones, special to the Catholic News Herald