Coronavirus: Livermore Elementary school teacher goes the extra mile for her students during pandemic

LIVERMORE, Calif. (KGO) -- As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to turn the Bay Area's school system on its head many teachers and students are beginning to grapple with a harsh reality: they may never see each other in person again.

One of those teachers is Heidi Robinson, who teaches transitional kindergarten at Marilyn Avenue Elementary School in Livermore.

"There is so much to do with them (students). There is so much learning to do," Robinson told ABC7 news. "There is no closure at all."

Transitional kindergarten is only a year and when it's over students often leave to go to other schools. When Robinson realized that the school year might be over already, she decided to make sure she did everything in her power to prepare her students for the next level.

"This has been tough, doing what you can do but not being with them is tough," said Heidi Robinson. "It's a huge learning curve for me especially teaching TK, where everything is hands-on, cutting and gluing to making a video and getting it out to them (students).

Ms. Robinson has had to change her teaching style by creating phonics, storytelling videos and connecting to her students through zoom. But that is not all. She's also personally delivering schoolwork to all seventeen of her students.

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"We are doing whatever we can to get the work to our students and to keep the learning going," said Robinson. "My kids are little, they're five so for them (the parents) to come and pack everybody into the car is a lot of work. It just made sense for me to deliver."

She's already made two rounds of deliveries since the Livermore School District school closure on March 13th.

"It was really fun, I would knock, walk away and they would open the door and they would say 'Ms. Robinson, Ms. Robinson.' We would wave at each other because I wanted to keep our distance," said Robinson. "Seeing their faces and seeing their faces light up and the way that I felt after was so great."

TK student, Rishiv Kapoor, was over the moon to see his teacher and sang the latest song the class has learned via zoom.

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"I miss the most, I miss Ms. Robinson and Ms. Wilkinson," said Rishiv Kapoor, TK student at Marilyn Avenue Elementary.

Robinson has been a teacher for fourteen years and has never experienced anything like the Coronavirus pandemic.

If the school year is indeed over, Ms Robinson plans on going the extra mile to say goodbye to each of her students.

"Some of them go off to different schools for kindergarten," said Robinson. "If that happens, the first thing that I am going to do is go to each person's house when this is lifted to just tell them that they made a difference to me. So they know, that they counted to me and even if we didn't have all 180 days together the days that we did do together meant so much."