Moving out of the first semester of this school year, there’s so much to reflect on. This school year has been, as many have called it, unprecedented and very uncertain. After almost a year of school online, technology seems to have become a little bit easier to use. It’s easier to navigate Canvas, but even so, in many of my classes someone can’t get into the Teams meeting or something doesn’t load. Thankfully, we are halfway through this unusual school year.

Over the last few months, attendance in my classes has dropped dramatically. In some of my classes, many of which are IB and AP, it’s a good day if just over half of the students come to class. On Monday, I logged attendance for all of my classes, and out of the six virtual meetings that I had, only 57% of students showed up. Online learning can be very boring, difficult, and tiring, and it’s easy to decide not to go to a class. It’s easy to slack off when you’re sitting at home instead of walking around school with your friends. Even though we’re at home, possibly sitting in our bed in our pajamas, online learning can be an issue because hours and hours of staring at a screen has proven to have negative side effects.

There have been many schedule changes in the first semester, and the same thing will likely happen in the second semester. Mr. Naglee announced in his Sunday ConnectEd call that we would be moving to five days of classes, instead of having Wednesday as an asynchronous day, starting the week of February 15. If we return to school this year, that will cause another schedule change because, at the very least, lunch will be shortened and the break between fifth and sixth period will be eliminated.

Hopefully, we will transition to online learning in the next few weeks, but nothing can be certain. The GCS Board of Education determined that our return to in-person learning would be delayed for at least three weeks, but what does that mean? Three weeks from the day that we were supposed to come back to school? Three weeks from the school board meeting where they determined that it would be three weeks? Three weeks until the discussion comes back onto the table? Whatever that may mean, it should be clarified on Tuesday, February 9 because that is when the nearest school board meeting will take place. No matter what happens, the important thing is to remain optimistic for the second semester and for what 2021 will bring.