The shutdown of our school was unexpected. We all thought that it would only last for a month, but as time passed, we realized that we weren’t going back to school anytime soon. The online school experience wasn’t the same for everyone. Some kids enjoyed it and found it an opportunity to take control of their learning, whereas others felt that it was difficult to manage their time and workload.
The kids weren’t the only ones who struggled with the online school experience, staff and parents struggled too. We all didn’t understand what was going on and how to deal with it.
When online school first started, technology wasn’t always kind to us.
We had glitches, computer problems, we couldn’t hear or understand each other, and sometimes we couldn’t even receive our work. IT WAS CHAOS! And we were all fed up after the first day. However, as time rapidly went on, our experience started to get better. We started to enjoy it more, we had many laughs with teachers and students, funny moments during calls like when teachers or students froze in a funny positions, and when kids were caught watching Netflix during class.
We started to get used to online school, it was a part of our everyday life.
Teachers began to come up with fun, engaging and creative ways for their students to learn and enjoy school during this strange and difficult time. In addition, students began to enjoy the more creative classes like PE, music, art etc. It was a chance for them to show what they could do with their own resources. Overall, the experience was great, it was a new take on education and showed students that even at the most difficult and unexpected times we have to prioritize and value our education.
After being away from school for so long and having a summer where many of us couldn’t travel, we surprisingly miss school and want to go back.
But we are nervous to go back, not only because we have been away for so long, but we have become unaccustomed to our old life. The social aspect of school and being around people is intimidating for us now since we have had many months without face to face social interaction. We’re afraid that school will be so different than how it was before. We won’t be able to interact with friends and teachers like we did before, and on top of that the safety precautions will be overwhelming. Online school, zoom calls, texting, and emails were the norm for a long time and when we go back to real school, it will not be the same. There are things we did miss about real school like eating lunch with friends, having lessons with multiple teachers and seeing friends in other classes. Although there are many things, we are nervous about, there are things that encourage us to look forward to this new experience like having shorter days, altering our uniforms and making them more comfortable. We also get to have face to face interaction with people again and get to bring in our own devices to work on.
Overall, we are excited to finally go back to school so soon and can’t wait for everything to go back to how it used to be before.
