2020 has brought about many new changes, one of the biggest being that Frederick County Public Schools have moved to remote, all online schooling. This has brought many hardships for all of the students, from preschool to high school.
After interviewing a preschooler’s mother, a Frederick mom said that her child’s preschool was supposed to start at the same time as that of her older children. As a result of the pandemic, however, that soon changed. So, her problem became that she and her children were not quite aware of the times classes would begin.
Along with this, this mom does not know how she and her preschooler will conduct classes, however she worries that if it is the same as her other children that her preschooler will have to sit for longer periods of time than the child is capable of.
It’s not just the younger kids who are having problems. For one high school student interviewed, the student’s entire schedule was messed up. Assigned to a teacher for the third block, it turned out the teacher didn’t have a class that block. This took almost two weeks to be fixed.
Many other students have also experience failures with Schoology. Schoology is the software program where students store all of their notes, schoolwork, and where they go to meet up with their classes. On top of Schoology failures, there have also been internet failures.
High school students are missing friends they used to see every day. Many haven’t seen each other since COVID-19 canceled school in March. While school sports are slowly starting practices, most competitions won’t happen until spring.
There are many good aspects to online schooling, however. Serenity Andrews, an eighth grader, likes being able to stay home and get up later since students don’t have to wake up in time to catch the bus. Faith Davis, a junior at Catoctin High School, likes being able to start and finish all schoolwork ahead of time.
Children’s schooldays are now more broken up as well. High school and middle school students typically have four long classes each day, while in some schools, students have seven slightly smaller classes. Since schools have moved to online instruction, high school has usually two-hour long classes four times a week, then one day of four 30-minute classes.
Middle school has three hour-long classes four times a week and one day of six classes, each of which lasts about 30 minutes. Students have fewer classes than they would if they were in school. This has lightened their workload in this time of need.
With all that has changed in 2020, one positive is that kids and teens have been able to wear pajamas to school everyday.
