With 46% of her students remote, teacher Chelsea Nussbaumer struggles with the stress this year has caused in her own way.  

“This has been my most difficult year of teaching in my seven years of teaching,” Chelsea Nussbaumer said. “There a lot of expectation with us teaching both in class and online. It feels like there is no work-life balance.”  

Nussbaumer teaches Principals of Human Services here and one section of Principals of Education at Saginaw. 

There is a big group of students that comes to 46% that are doing online classes instead of going to school, and that makes attendance difficult.  

“It makes me very tired and stressed. It’s a mess,” Nussbaumer said. “You take attendance in class for the kids in person and in the live meeting. Other kids have until 11:59 p.m. to do their attendance, so the next day we have to go check if they have done their attendance.”  

With a lot of people wanting to do in person schooling, there are precautions that need to be taken. Students do not use paper this year, they use laptops.  

“I feel like it’s been more official because when you go to college and work, you will be using them [Laptops],” Nussbaumer said. “However, I feel like the students do not have the work ethic or computer abilities for it.”  

Having to do a class in person and have a live meeting running for students to join at home going at the same time, you can get distracted by one group very easily.  

“I feel like it’s very difficult to focus on both sets of students.” Nussbaumer said. “You end up ignoring one set of group, which is not what I want to do.” 

Becoming a teacher was not always the dream for Nussbaumer.  

“I worked at hotels before teaching and ended up not having a job.” Nussbaumer said. “A lot of my friends were teachers and I said I would try, so I started to sub to see if I liked it. I really liked it.”