Alyssa Bryant has looked forward to being a senior since she started high school. She remembers being a freshman, chattering excitedly to her friends about their dreams for their senior year. \u201cNow,\u201d she says, \u201cmy best friend is going [to school] opposite days from what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a student at Owego Free Academy (OFA), Bryant has been attending school virtually for close to nine months now. Instead of the senior year she dreamed of as a freshman, this year has been defined by Zoom classes, taken from her kitchen table. <\/span><\/p>\n When I talked to her, she was sitting in front of her computer, the wall behind her lined in small blue lights. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe teachers and the students have done a good job of making it fun,\u201d she said. Still, \u201cI don\u2019t even think we realized how exciting it was to go to school. I didn\u2019t realize.\u201d<\/p>\n As the COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized our society, the \u2018traditional\u2019 high school experience has disappeared. At OFA, students are split into two groups, red and blue. The red group attends school on Monday and Thursday, while the blue group attends on Tuesday and Friday. At all other times, they are learning virtually. <\/span><\/p>\n Teachers must simultaneously teach students in both places, and students have to balance responsibilities at home with their learning at school. This shift in education has had notable ramifications for students’ ability to focus, to make relationships with teachers, and to maintain relationships with each other. <\/p>\n Jayden Ripic, a senior at Owego, says \u201ca lot of the hardships come in with a teacher trying to teach a group online, as well as right in front of them in their classroom at the same time.\u201d Virtual students struggle to be noticed without interrupting the in-person conversations. <\/span><\/p>\n It becomes even harder during group projects. For these, students are split into virtual \u2018breakout rooms,\u2019 which divide a video call into small groups. Teachers can only be in one group at a time. \u201cIf you have a question for the teacher, that your partner may not know, you can\u2019t ask that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s become almost like a business. Like you\u2019re a client, and they\u2019re offering a service.\u201d Ripic says that it’s difficult to make real relationships with your teachers. While in the past students might have spent free periods in a favorite teacher\u2019s classroom, it\u2019s harder to spend that time outside of class with teachers now. <\/p>\n Hunter Wuerthner, also a senior at OFA, agrees. \u201cA lot of the time you\u2019re not even talking to the teacher. Unless you already knew the teacher and you\u2019re already personally close – there isn\u2019t any relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, things have changed significantly since April. \u201cIt\u2019s nice that we don\u2019t have to be all virtual anymore. We do get that opportunity to have some amount of normalcy,\u201d says Ripic.<\/p>\n \u201cIn April, nobody really knew what they were doing,\u201d Wuerthner says. \u201cIt was pretty much a six month summer.\u201d<\/p>\n Especially in project-based classes like music, labs and art, teachers have had to find creative ways to teach their students. Bryant now has a ukulele lesson where chorus would once have been. Ripic is at school on Wednesday afternoons for music classes, and says that he has become a \u201clab leader\u201d for his AP Biology class. He and three other students do the labs in person, while their classmates watch from home and keep time and other measurements. This can be stressful. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor the people that are there, it\u2019s very difficult to do those labs with just one person, especially with the time constraints,\u201d he says. \u201cA lab leader might be so stressed to get the lab done, that they might not even understand what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n The unique challenges of Zoom class are not limited to these. Many students struggle to stay focused during zoom classes. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many distractions being at home. Having a sister who\u2019s on a different schedule than I am. She\u2019ll want to come in and talk and I can\u2019t talk,\u201d Bryant says. \u201cBy the last class of the day, I\u2019m very tired. It\u2019s strange, because I haven\u2019t really done anything. It\u2019s because I\u2019ve been online all day.\u201d<\/p>\n Ripic has to take care of a younger nephew during the second half of the day. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have a nephew, and he can\u2019t move his arms,\u201d he says. \u201cThe elementary school ends at 1:15, and we end at 3:45. He comes over to our house after school. With him, sometimes needing me to do things for him, or just making noise, it gets kind of difficult to focus.\u201d <\/p>\n The social part of high school has also been affected. Bryant says sometimes she realizes that, \u201cI forgot this person went to our school. I haven\u2019t seen them since March.\u201d She\u2019s learned how to adjust her social life for quarantine, saying that, \u201csmall friend groups are better than bigger friend groups.\u201d It\u2019s a point that all the people I interviewed seem to agree with. <\/p>\n Ripic feels the loss of fall football. \u201cIt was going to be my senior season. We were going really strong – this was going to be our chance to prove what we had been working for all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n Without regular face-to-face contact, social media has taken on an even bigger role in connecting students. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s become a lot more active,\u201d says Thaddeus Robertson, \u201cYou\u2019re getting judged a lot more off what your social media looks like now.\u201d <\/p>\n Wuerthner agrees. \u201cIt already had a huge impact before, especially on teens, and it\u2019s only made it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryant sees some positives in the changes. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf you really want to have memories, you\u2019ll make them,\u201d she says. \u201cIt makes you so much more thankful for everything. Being at school with your friends, sitting through sporting events, going to pep rallies with your friends.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n She is hopeful for the future, and hopeful that her class might be able to graduate in person in June. <\/p>\n \u201cEven though COVID has taken our year, we all still plan to get the most of our year,\u201d says Wuerthner. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alyssa Bryant has looked forward to being a senior since she started high school. She remembers being a freshman, chattering excitedly to her friends about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":83100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n