THE EFFECT OF ONLINE SCHOOL DURING THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

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Online school was hard for all ages, especially kids who have trouble not being face-to-face

The gruesome and heart-wrenching Covid-19 lockdown influenced the whole world as we know it. During this lockdown, students were vastly affected. They were forced into school through a computer from their own rooms. Online school, indeed, had a big effect on teachers, parents, and especially students.

It all started in my 6th-grade year. My first year of middle school. Life had gone on and there had been silent talks about an epidemic brewing on the outskirts of Wuhan, China. Eventually, there were small, but manageable cases of this epidemic in the United States, causing my school to close for two weeks. My friends and I at the time thought that this would be a fun break for two weeks for us to get our minds off school and just relax. What we didn’t know is how badly this epidemic turned pandemic would get.

About a week into the temporary shutdown, the whole country basically closed down: schools, churches, malls, movie theatres, and even most restaurants. My school had us go and pick up a packet from each of our teachers to work on for the rest of the school year to keep our minds doing some work. But who am I kidding; I didn’t do a single page of those packets. Some teachers had us check in with video calls to say hello and update each other, but no one really had a grasp on how to work for an online school.

Online school was a tough environment to pay attention in

In my 7th-grade year, I moved to Calvert County. And the county here seemed to have more of a grasp on the whole online school idea than Prince George’s County did.

Online school was a breeze for me. Most teachers made us attend zoom calls where they just went over the work with us and didn’t challenge us. We did that for most of the year. I slept, ate, and didn’t pay attention in most of my classes.

An interview I held with another student who experienced a difficult time with online school was fellow freshman Blake Palyo. I had asked Blake, “Do you think that you really learned anything during online school”? He stated, “Honestly not really. I think that during online school I struggled to really understand online school and if I’m being honest, I didn’t really pay much attention. There were too many distractions”. I followed up that by asking him, “Do you remember anything you learned”? He said, “Nope,” then laughed. “I never paid much attention to the classes or much to the work.” This begins to show how online school really did mess with our brains and was honestly just a waste of time, in my opinion.

I asked Blake one more question; “How did you do grades-wise during online school, compared to once we went back into school?” His response did not shock me. “During online school, I kept my grades up and it was pretty easy to do so. The teachers gave us all the answers and didn’t really challenge us. But the second I went back to school during the end of 7th grade, my grades went way down.” He told me he wasn’t ready for in-person school after having everything handed to him that year online.

Online school did have some positives. It gave kids more time at home, helped students to focus and taught them to learn a different way other than in the classroom. It was a pothole in the road, but one that helped many students mature as individuals and grow their character.

Although online school really wasn’t a productive semester in my life, and the lives of many, enough can’t be said for the teachers who put in hard work to make online school and online lives work. They were placed in an impossible position trying to get a curriculum from home and keep us learning and our minds running. They did the best they could, and nothing should be put against them. Thank you to all the teachers who really tried their best to keep us engaged although we really didn’t always listen.