AKRON, Ohio — As summer comes to an end, many teachers across the state are getting ready to head back to the classroom, like Krista Bowden, who is a high school biology teacher in the Akron public school district. 

Bowden has been a teacher in Akron for the past 10 years, but even before that, she was no stranger to the area. 

"I’ve been in Akron most of my life," Bowden said. "When I decided to be a teacher, my whole thing was to give back to where I came from because when I went to college, I saw some of the shortcomings I had and I wanted to make sure coming back to where I come from, I can try to close that gap.”

Although she has a decade of teaching under her belt, Bowden said nothing could have prepared her for the challenges the pandemic brought with teaching virtually. 

"Most of our kids, they struggled with that social and emotional piece of not being on a schedule, not seeing the teachers, not seeing their friends,” she explained. 

Bowden made it a point to try to provide a scene of normalcy for her students while they were at home. 

"So I would spend my lunch and they would eat and we would eat together virtually because in the building they would come into my room during my lunch," she said. "A lot of the kids wanted to keep that going.” 

She also gave her students time during class to interact with each other about topics outside of their studies.

“I believe that was the big engagement piece for my class, was allowing the kids to venture outside of bio a little bit but then they knew when to come back in,” Bowden explained.

This is something she said she will carry with her long after the pandemic. 

"The one thing that I really, truly got out of virtual learning is to focus more on those random conversations," she said "[Focus] more so the social emotional piece for the kids.” 

Akron students start heading back to school the week of Aug. 30.