A hurdle for most became an opportunity for one of Presbyterian College’s education majors this past year.

Shelby Allan, who graduated this spring, was about to begin her senior capstone in education during the spring of 2020 when the global Covid-19 pandemic made remote learning a certainty and her research options anything but certain. So, instead of despairing the limits on her research, she leaned into the pandemic instead.

Seizing on a topic that educators will find interesting, Allan focused her research on how communication between teachers and families is affected when students are forced to learn remotely. Interviewing parents from five different states, she asked them about teachers’ communications with them during the pandemic lockdowns as they helped their children learn at home.

Allan’s findings were mixed. One the one hand, she found that parents were appreciative of the effort many teachers made to ensure that their students had what they needed to learn at home, including textbooks and packets of worksheets when internet access was unavailable. On the other hand, though, Allan also discovered that many parents received no communications at all from their children’s teachers, which left them feeling lost about what their kids were supposed to be learning. She also learned that there were significant differences in teacher communication based on schools and districts and that many districts did not require their teachers to hold virtual classes or even contact families to let them know what the expectations for student learning were.

Based on her findings, Allan developed recommendations for school districts in the event of future situations where schools may have to close unexpectedly. Last spring, before the Charleston native graduated, Allan presented her findings – “The Importance of School-Home Communication During the Pandemic That Turned Home into School” – at the National Council for Undergraduate Research’s annual conference and at PC’s Honors Day Symposium.

Allan thanked the College for the opportunity not only to present her research at a professional conference but also for helping her prepare for a future as a teacher and researcher.

“I am so grateful for the opportunities that Presbyterian College has given me and will never forget how much the past four years has impacted my life,” she said.

During her time at PC, Allan was a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the international honor society in education, and was the vice president of the student chapter of the Palmetto State Teachers Association.

Dr. Julia Wilkins, professor of the education capstone class, said that being involved in professional organizations and learning how to conduct educational research are crucial for students entering the teaching profession as teachers need to be able to identify viable solutions to pressing educational problems.