What Mr. Figueroa Is Doing Around Campus to Stop the Spread of COVID-19

Niccijade Reeves-Alhark

Staff Reporter

In the past week of school, COVID-19 has popped up in classrooms and other areas on campus. The school has approached the pandemic by requiring everyone to wear masks and sanitize when they can. Recently, they have also equipped classrooms with air purifiers, which are said to be able to, according to mdanderson.org, remove some viruses up to 99%. On top of this, teachers around campus have been taking different approaches for teaching their students to keep them safe.

Mr. Figueroa, a Spanish teacher at Ironwood, views the pandemic of COVID-19 as a desperate situation that people should be cautious about and try to prevent the spread of. He commented in an interview that, “People need to monitor what they’re doing- monitoring they’re activities, just to be respectful of their communities and their neighbors. Everybody needs to do their job to do the best to stifle or shorten the spread of the virus.”

During the first week of school, Mr. Figueroa held his Friday Spanish classes outside. The reason behind the change in scenery was that a few students had tested positive for COVID-19 in Figueroa’s classes, and he did not want to further the spread. He states, “I just thought, in this type of situation, we’re going into a weekend, why risk more contamination? Knowing full that we have [air] purifiers coming, people are getting vaccines, that was my choice to mitigate or to slow down the virus possibly in our classroom.” He made sure no students entered the class when the last bell rang, directing them to sit at the benches outside by the library. There he proceeded with class and assigned review work. The students seemed to enjoy their time outside, chatting while doing their work and helping each other on the assignment while getting fresh air.

Figueroa tends to be an outside of the box thinker and thinks that rotations in seating, inside and outside, would be beneficial to students who are not comfortable being in the classroom. He views having classes outside as a return back to what humans have done throughout history.

Mr. Figueroa says possibly, sometime in the future, he will hold more classes outside from time to time, “I have no problem going outside, and it’s a different venue for kids.”

Image Credit: Niccijade Reeves-Alhark