When the pandemic made teachers and students adapt to the new normal, aka online classes, nobody knew what this could mean for either of them.
In many aspects, classes are still similar to what they were before: students interact with their teacher and with each other, lessons are taught, assignments are submitted and marked. But, given that students and teachers join the classes from home, these classes come with their pros and cons.
For instance, when students attend classes from the comfort of their home, they can be easily distracted. Some of the most common distractions are: the need for a snack, a toilet break, or to simply tell their parents something they just remembered.
But these online classes also come with many advantages, some of which nobody had even imagined.
Of course, one of the main advantages is that students and teachers don’t need to leave the house in order to go to school, which translates to being able to wake up later. Teachers also save gas this way, while parents don’t need to worry about their children’s whereabouts and wellbeing since they are in the safety of their house. Or are they?
It seems that staying at home cannot always guarantee your safety, and this is something a family from Sacramento recently realized.
Siblings were online, attending a zoom class with their German teacher a few weeks ago, when a man broke into their Galt home.
Jennifer Petersen’s online class had just been completed and, per her habit, she didn’t log out until every one of her students had done so first. But, two of her students wouldn’t log out and that’s when she knew that something was off.
Indeed, moments later, the look on the kids’ faces would confirm that something was wrong in the students’ house.
“I was just watching their faces and I can see their faces go from concern to panic,” Petersen told CBS Sacramento.
The students told their teacher that someone had just opened the window and ran inside the house. They were obviously starting to panic and screamed for help. Petersen had to help them in some way.
The woman tried to keep her cool, although she was really worried inside. She stayed with them and called 911.
“He came through the front side window. They saw him running through the house. He said he didn’t want to steal or break anything and he ran out the back door and hopped out the back fence,” the scanner audio described.
The man did leave the house without hurting the children, and Petersen remained online until the police arrived at the kids’ house.
The students’ mother, who was not at home at the time of the incident, thanked the teacher publicly and now calls her a hero.
“Thank You Mrs. Peterson for staying logged in to help my kids by calling 911 and for giving them the protection and comfort that they needed at that moment even though you were miles away,” Luna wrote in a Facebook post, according to Newser.
Petersen said that she only did what any teacher would have done in a similar situation. Of course, her motherly instinct must have helped her, too.
For details on the story, you can watch the video below.
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