School But Make it the Pandemic Version

“RIIINGGGG” goes my 7:45 am phone alarm. Hurriedly I go to my bathroom to brush my teeth and my hair before I make a quick cup of coffee, turn on my laptop, then log onto zoom. I don’t really feel like showing my face so I don’t turn on my camera but I plug my headphones to listen to the bright and cheery voice of my first teacher of the class day. I have multiple classes throughout the day that requires me to sit down, on the floor or on a chair, and attempt to pay attention as much as I can. My teachers include numerous breakout rooms and although we seem eager to collaborate most of the time my peers and I only engage enough to do what we were asked and rarely anything more.

Since the beginning of lockdown from Mid-March of 2020 to present day many people have gone stir crazy from the lack of human interaction and increased online/digital interaction. Many educators have been trying to find various strategies to adapt to the digital learning that the pandemic has forced upon us. Unfortunately there was a lot of confusion at the beginning of the pandemic on exactly how students, especially students in younger grades, would be expected to accommodate to the unprecedented time we have all been experiencing. School districts were in a horrifying and dizzy mess to have enough electronic devices and wireless internet access to continue student’s online learning from home. Numerous working class families were put at a disadvantage if they already did not have a technological device or internet at home. Young children were automatically expected to be able to read and be able to navigate their own digital device for online school. Parents talked about the difficulty it has been to keep younger students actively engaged in their classes and keep up with the work. As a current university student I completely understand how difficult it can be to maintain my school work with the current circumstances. Although, students have been experiencing so many individual hardships on top of online school that some have even forgot about the inverse struggles of their instructors. Teachers have been going insane trying to keep up with the ever changing battles that distance learning has brought to teaching such as accurately assessing students through hybrid learning, managing their mental and physical health, encouraging students, and so much more. A lot of parents and administrators haven’t been very supporting towards either students or teachers and hopefully they will soon.