Portales teacher: Circumstances 'uncharted territory'

PORTALES — Wade Fraze knows history.

It’s the reason he teaches social studies at Portales High School.

“I’ve always loved history,” Fraze said. “I’m a history nerd, I guess. So I was just drawn to it.”

Now he has the opportunity of putting these historic coronavirus times into context for his students.

“As a matter of fact, the next thing that we were going to teach right after state basketball tournament was the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl,” said Fraze, who is also head coach of Portales’ girls basketball team, which he led to state titles in 2014 and ’18.

“World War I, we were just finishing that up, and the Spanish flu, how that killed more than the war,” Fraze continued. “What we’re going through does kind of lend itself to what we’re studying, so we can tie the two together.”

Fraze, like educators throughout New Mexico and throughout the country, is now adapting to teaching online. It’s been a challenge, but he is making due.

“It’s a little different with social studies,” Fraze said, “because we are a core subject, but not a core subject that’s tested by the state; the emphasis is on the core subjects that are tested by the state. So what we’re doing is getting kids caught up that are behind.”

And that can be as challenging this time of year as it is in the classroom.

“In their minds, summer has started,” Fraze said. “Some are hard to get a hold of, some are hard to motivate, but some have really been conscientious about it. But that’s how it is in the classroom also. The ones that are conscientious in class are conscientious online; those who don’t care now didn’t care in the classroom, either.”

Fraze is used to sitting at the head of the class, seeing other human faces just feet away from him. There are still human faces just feet away, but they’re on a computer screen, something Fraze never expected would be the case when he became a teacher.

“The circumstances we’re in, it’s uncharted territory,” he said. “It’s not like there’s an expert to go to. Nobody’s been in this, not on this scale. It’s new territory for administration, teachers, everybody. It’s kind of a trial-and-error thing.”

And it has some advantages.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to teach online all the time,” Fraze said, “because I think the interaction with the students, they get far more from face-to-face teaching than they do online. But that said, I do get to set my own hours.

“I don’t think it’s what’s best for the kids, as far as the instruction they’re able to get online. I don’t think it benefits the kids like if they were in the class.

“But if that’s what we have to do, that’s what we have to do. I think we’ll probably have to re-teach some things next fall.”