What will normal be?

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This year has been very different from what we were ever used to, having to stay home and do virtual school and for those kids who have no other choice but to go to face to face school due to their circumstances. It’s been a challenge for teachers since this isn’t the way they usually teach, and for students who aren’t accustomed to online learning, they’ve had to deal with more distractions than ever before.

In recent days, the all important COVID-19 vaccine has been all the news. With unprecidented FDA approval timelines, and rapid roll out just before the busy holiday season, hope is in the air. But in reality, the COVID risk is still high. The new vaccines from Pzifer and Moderna are exciting, but unlikely to impact Westside anytime soon. Heathcare and frontline workers will be first to recieve the shot, nursing homes and those that work around the most vunerable will be next. School staffs and students are down the list. And importantly, the due to possible side affects the Pzifer vaccine is not recommended for anyone under the age of 16.  So it seems for the foreseeable future here at the Westside campus, masks will remain mandatory. Social distancing and other precautions will continue. Some expect this measures to extend possibly into 2022.

Let’s say we do go to school, when this happens can we really assume that everyone has retained the same amount of knowledge?. We can’t, seeing as how no one really knows what their other classmate’s circumstances might have been during the Pandemic, we can’t expect everyone to retain everything they were instructed to learn over a screen knowing that they might be going through a hard time Mentally. It could also be that the student just didn’t have as many resources as everyone else which then affected their way of learning.

I decided to write this story to try to get teachers to see a student’s point of view which may change their view on everything. Some teachers might think that some students in their class are being really “lazy” or teachers may get mad when a student is unable to take a test while being in class because they are at work and are just listening to the team’s meeting.  I feel that teachers should take everything that’s going on into consideration, they can’t assume much about a student because they might not know how much they are struggling right now. Even when they are okay and don’t have to go to work too much work might overwhelm kids. That doesn’t give students a right to not do anything but as long as you see that they are trying I think it’s okay to take it easy on them.