Kyle Yasso, most commonly known as Mrs. Yasso has been a teacher at Spring Valley high school for 4 years, teaching English and AVID for freshmen and sophomores. She is highly caring and involved with her students. Currently in the 2021-2022 school year, she is pregnant with her second child, and her pregnancy precipitated her to make serious substantial changes in her teaching career, as she went on medical leave due to medical complications half way through the third quarter and had the epiphany to make the career change as a midwife. 

Yasso had her first child, Elliot, the week of the COVID-19 lockdown of all Clark County School District schools. During this time, she had to navigate through the harsh times of becoming a mother, while balancing a teacher position in which supported her students through this unprecedented time.

“I was pregnant from June 2019 until March 2020 and my daughter Elliott was born,” Yasso said. “Not only did my life change because I became a mother, but it was the onset of this massive social, cultural, economic, and historical change.” 

Earlier this month on February 10th, Governor Sisolak lifted the mask mandate for Covid effective immediately in all public areas. The school district promptly lifted the mandate in schools as well after the end of the school day on February 10th. 

“I don’t blame the district for lifting the mandate immediately when the governor did,” Yasso said. “I’m not sure about the case rate, but I think that it’s coming down to where we were last summer when the mask mandate was lifted last time.”

Swiftly after the announcement Sisolak put out, CCSD lifted the mask mandate in schools and Yasso put in for medical leave and left teaching physically in the Spring Valley environment. Her reasoning for making this decision was because of her medical team’s input about her pregnancy being at risk and her own comfortability working in the school environment. 

Even though pregnant people are not at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, there are major side effects that can occur if they get it, according to UNICEF. COVID opposes a higher risk of a baby being born prematurely, UNICEF found. Additionally, Yasso herself has her own medical complications with her pregnancy that makes her at high risk for contracting the virus, giving her more challenges to face. 

 “My leave is covered by Family Medical Leave because of the risk of complications with preterm labor,” Yasso said. “The decision was made in conjunction with my OB and midwife who decided that the risk to my unborn child is too great to remain working, not just because of COVID and the mask mandate, but like the consequences of my baby being born prematurely right now, it’s with survivability chances are quite low.”

At the same time with all of this new change occurring in her life, she has decided to go for a career change from teaching to being a midwife. Her inspiration came from the new found feelings and changes she has felt since her uprising as a mother. 

“I’m planning on being a midwife because I had an epiphany last summer, I had my daughter and a wonderful experience with my birth team there,” Yasso said. “As I was giving my friends baby advice, I imagined the impact that I can actually have if I were in the room offering a calming presence offering, you know, being able to be a part of people’s pregnancy journey from day one to a full nine months.” 

Baby products were very difficult to find during the beginning of the pandemic because of the large amounts of people taking them for themselves, foreign imports slowing down, and generally baby products are very expensive. Additionally, funds were very difficult at this time for the district, which caused Yasso to come back to teaching earlier than anticipated. 

“In the beginning of the pandemic, I remember there were things that we couldn’t find and Elliot was a newborn,” Yasso said. “The districts stopped paying my maternity leave sub, and so my English students had no English teacher and so I made the very difficult and personal choice to come off of maternity leave to teach virtually.” 

In her spare time Yasso keeps herself away from COVID for her and her family by staying home as much as possible and involves herself in productive activities such as reading to keep her mind occupied. 

“My husband does the grocery shopping because he likes grocery shopping, so I’m very limited on when I can go out,” Yasso said. “I read books and I’m still working behind the scenes like grading, answering emails and helping students with Project Y.” 

Even through this difficult time, Yasso is still trying her best to cater to her students’ educational needs and is still here to guide her students for the rest of the 2021-2022 school year.