By Olivia Yin
I think that we should return to 100% in-person learning once more in the fall of 2021 school year because most students will already be vaccinated, and we have the right safety system to uphold that type of in-person learning.
However, I think that masks should still be mandatory for the time being to protect students who might be immunocompromised, etc. It would not be fair to those students who are unable to get the vaccine to have to wear masks while the rest of the students do not. However, I understand how they could still be safe if the students are the only ones who are not protected with the vaccine.
There are still unknowns about the COVID-19 pandemic, like the new strains of the virus that are from places like India where the vaccine may not be as effective in protecting students. In that case, it is important to stay vigilant in schools and keep masks mandatory.
One thing that I think are not helpful or necessary for the next school year are barriers. They might make people feel like they are helping, but in reality, it does not block gas particles from being spread when students are not sitting with the barrier protecting from the sides.It is only making it more difficult for students to see the board which will negatively impact their learning abilities.
After students return from summer vacation, it makes sense that many families would have traveled to far away places that might expose students to different virus strains. Because of this, I think that quarantining students before returning to school if they haven’t done so already should still be an important option.
As for remote learning, I think it is important to take another survey and see how many students are actually going to stay remote. For most of the classes, almost all students are in-person. This is very helpful for the teachers because that means they don’t have to keep monitoring and juggling with the Google Meet to accommodate a few students. If all students return to school, it keeps the system more organized. In this way, I think that schools would be able to return to in person school like it was pre-COVID. For example, students will stay home if sick and not log onto the Google Meet.
One thing I think is important to keep are mask breaks. It was very helpful during the day to get time to go outside and take off our masks; if masks are still mandatory next year then it is imperative that we keep mask breaks in play.
Another thing is that before the pandemic, students didn’t bring in personal devices to school; most of the work was on paper, and if digital, they brought out the Chromebook carts and bins for students to use. However, I think it is much more efficient for students to bring their personal devices because everything goes faster that way and students are able to organize themselves using google drive which is much easier than wasting paper on things that work better digitally.
I am opposed to the idea of everyone using school-assigned Chromebooks. I understand that certain students are not able to bring their own devices and the assigned computers would keep students with a uniform experience, but it is more comfortable and much less expensive for the school for the students who have their own laptops to bring it in and for the other students to use the school provided computers.
Overall, I think students are just happy to be back in-person for school. No matter how COVID-19 conditions might alter the school classroom learning situation, we have handled a lot so far and will make the best of it.
