COVID-19 has made a huge impact on schools all over the world. There were quite a few students who have been online a good majority of the year and have now finally transitioned back to in-person for the rest of the year.
Eighth-grader Santiago Croes-Ball said he returned to in-person school because his family got vaccinated. Seventh-grader Jason Chen said he was able to return to in-person learning because his family moved to a house closer to KO; his previous house was about 45 minutes away.
Santi was excited to return to school in person. “Classes are definitely easier and I can actually understand what is going on,” he said. Jason agreed, and also felt a bit surprised by how different being in person is to be remote. “All the things I did on zoom are a lot different than in person and the kids are a lot bigger than I imagined they would be”.
When middle school math teacher Stacey Tomkiel was how she felt about having most of her students in person, she said that she was so excited to have her online students back. Ms. Tomkiel added, “also needed to make sure that they knew how and where to find me for extra help and I do still keep many of my material digital just in case anyone was to make that switch back to online.”
Santi and Jason shared similar negative experiences with online learning. . “You could not understand what the teacher was saying 50% of the time because of how bad the microphones were, the school internet is horrible and sometimes the teachers will leave you in a breakout room and just forget about you,” Santiago said. Jason echoed the sentiment, also adding that it was hard to communicate and understand certain tasks.
Teachers, as well as students, are happy to have our remote students back and hope more will follow as we transition further to the end of the year.
