OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) - — School teachers aren't the only educators having to alter the way they teach students.
Those teaching the arts, like music and dance are also using digital platforms to communicate and teach students from home.
For 7-year-old Karsen Wallman, guitar lessons are now taught from the comfort of his home using different apps like Facetime, Zoom or Skype.
Kelsey Wallman is Karsen's mother, and the executive director of the Omaha School of Music and Dance.
"We switched all to live virtual lessons," Wallman said. "Primarily the platforms we're using is Skype and Zoom, but whatever is convenient for our families we don't mind what platforms you use as long as you're able to have that interaction with your teachers."
Wallman says the school was already refereeing virtual music lessons, but as the pandemic worsened music and dance lessons went completely online.
"Finding a good platform to do live lessons on that's easy we could do that every day of the week," Wallman said. "You know technical issues we could fix those are all fixable, but not being able to see our families Monday through Saturday is a little heart-wrenching."
In-person interactions are a thing of the past (at least for right now), but Wallman says virtual lessons allow students to maintain a sense of normalcy.
"I want to make sure that we're all learning something from this experience so the next time a lesson starts that 30, 45-minute, 60-minute lesson is just cherished and valued," she said.
But going virtual isn't all bad, dance instructor Amanda Loomis says the online lessons have some benefits.
"I think it really just draws in their focus a lot more," Loomis said. "They can't ever hear any of their peers talking or anything like that so it's never a distraction for them."
Loomis tells 3 News Now she encourages her students to dance as a way to express their emotions.
I know there's a lot of crazy emotion going on right now (like cabin fever) or even just being frustrated that things are changing or anything like that my favorite thing to do when I was frustrated or had a lot of emotions was to just close myself in my room and just dance it out," Loomis said.
And thanks to the weekly lessons, students like Karsen will be ready for their next performance.
