School Days: Pandemic Edition
After months of meetings, consultations with experts, and feedback gathered from questionnaires sent to families, the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District decided all students would attend school virtually through at least the end of September. Now that October has arrived, some students will soon be returning to school buildings two days a week.
What is all this like for the kids? What is their day-to-day experience of a school year unlike any other? We asked students in elementary, middle, and high school to let us know. We’ll be publishing their answers throughout the year. Here are the first three.
Colton Anckaitis studying at home. Photo: Jeannine Anckaitis
Online school is harder than regular school because we are sitting in the same spot for hours staring at the same thing, and it can be harder to hear the teacher for the whole time. Your teacher can even get kicked out of Zoom. That happened to my gym teacher twice already.
Some things about being at home are better. I can have a soccer ball at my feet during class. My chair at home is more comfortable than in school. I like getting warm food for lunch at my house instead of eating something that got cold in my locker.
Some parts of online school are basically the same as regular school. People might be surprised to know that I’m writing in my notebooks as much as I’m typing on the keyboard in online school. German and math classes feel the same. We’d probably be doing the same number of Kahoots, which is a website that gives questions and multiple choice answers that the teachers in almost every class use as a learning game. In science, our heart rate experiment was probably the same as it would have been in class.
My favorite thing about online school so far is learning pen-tapping drumming from Mr. McLaughlin in music class.
Colton Anckaitis
Seventh grader
Strath Haven Middle School
Charlotte Davis attending virtual school. Photo: Jeremy Davis
This school year has been as crazy and hectic as it has been exciting and stress-relieving. We spend all day on the computer. Sometimes people get kicked off the Zoom meeting, and we spend 10 minutes just trying to get them back on. Other times Mrs. Strehle lets us curl up in bed as she reads to us.
Specials this year (music, art, P.E., etc.) have been very interesting. One art class we didn’t even get five minutes into the lesson before the Zoom call abruptly ended. The art teacher didn’t end it, the Zoom meeting just ended itself because the art teacher had a bad internet connection.
But there have been some good things about school this year too. If someone is being annoying, the host can just mute them. Or, you can type things privately to the teacher in the chat if you don’t want the whole class to hear.
School this year has been bittersweet. In the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Strehle told us to turn lemons into lemonade. We really have! I stole all the sugar in the house. But that would be confessing to a crime, so forget I said that.
Charlotte Davis
Fifth grader
Swarthmore-Rutledge School
Online school is… well I don’t know if there’s really a word to describe it. While it definitely has some perks, it is also exhausting and frustrating. Believe me, I don’t mind the extra two hours of sleep. Waking up when it’s light out is a nice change from in-person school. Lying in bed or eating a snack in the 10 minutes between Zoom classes is great. It certainly beats navigating through the crowded hallways and climbing up a million stairs to get from one class to another. And I definitely don’t miss lugging my 20-pound backpack around.
That’s about it for the benefits of online school. (Besides the prevention of COVID-19. That’s definitely a good thing!) I miss hugging my friends. I miss struggling to keep my eyes open in the hallway in the morning before class (or rushing to get some homework done last minute). I miss Friday night football games and band rehearsal (despite the drumline-induced back pain). I’m sad that there most likely won’t be a spring musical this year. I’m nervous about trying to run Gender and Sexuality Alliance meetings over Zoom. Life through a screen is stressful to say the least.
Zoom classes are hard. Staring at a screen all day is pretty easy when it’s Netflix you’re watching. It’s not as easy when you’re learning about factorials. I have two siblings and parents who are all doing work and Zooms at home. There are a lot of “PLEASE BE QUIET!!!” texts in our family group chat between the hours of 8:40 a.m. and 2:20 p.m. Between the dog barking at the squirrels taunting her through the window and my little brother and parents having a lunch break while I’m still in class… I’m eternally grateful that Zoom has a mute option.
Asynchronous Wednesdays aren’t any easier. I feel like all I do is sit on the couch and type. When I finally shut my laptop, it’s like a breath of fresh air. The weather is perfect right now, and though I guess I could do work outside, I tend to park myself in the basement with an assortment of chargers, dishes, pencils, and binders. Having my dog sit next to me while I try to remember the subjunctive conjugation of “hacer” for Spanish class is certainly a perk though!
Online school is tiring, and hard, and confusing, and unpredictable. I honestly never thought that I’d want to get up at six in the morning to sit in class all day. Right about now I’d give anything to be standing at the bus stop in the dark. None of this is easy, but I’m grateful for my teachers who are working so hard. They’re clearly doing their best to make this experience as good as it can be. To any teachers reading this, thank you. I’m proud of my classmates for problem solving and working together. Above all, I’m grateful to be healthy. If going to class in my bedroom will keep me and so many others safe, then I’m in no rush to go back.
Zoe Feinberg
11th grader
Strath Haven High School
