A Year of Virtually Learning

This part of the post was written December 2020 and was originally published on Olney Elementary Speaks, Olney Elementary’s  student-run online magazine. Alondra Rosales is the teacher coordinator for this group and helped Lune edit the post for publication. 

It is October 2020 and I have been doing virtual learning for two months now. In virtual learning, students are pretty much sitting in a chair all day and staring at a screen for 7 hours straight. There is a majority of people who are getting blue light glasses, which are glasses to help with headaches caused by staring at a screen. I also get a lot of headaches.

Another thing about virtual learning is that we do not feel the school vibe. We are not sitting at tables, desks, or talking to our friends because we have to stay muted during a Zoom or Google Meet. It is important to have children socializing at school because it’s where they learn and get comfortable talking to each other.

During in-person school, we usually have a long lunch break and a bit of recess time, but in virtual learning, we have a short lunch break and then we’re back in class. I think that we should have longer lunch breaks to rest more. It’s honestly exhausting to sit in a chair all day.

When we are virtually learning, all we care about is missing assignments. We are too worried about our grades because we get points off when turning in work late. Having not a lot of time to complete work is very stressful, which causes a lot of pressure on me to finish assignments on time. I feel like students don’t even care about learning, they only care about handing in work on time and passing.

To make virtual learning better, I feel like we need more time to finish assignments, longer lunch breaks, and less screen time.

The following portion of this post was written in April 2021. 

Now that it is April, it has been about ten months since starting virtual learning. We are finally going back to in-person learning. I am surprised that we are going back in person. I say this because I have been told that we were going back around November, but that has never ended up happening.

I have decided that I should stay all virtual instead of going into hybrid learning. I feel safer, and I have learned that when learning virtually, I get better grades because I can take notes and keep them. In person, most of the time, teachers take them and throw them out.

I still have trouble learning virtually. It is easy to get distracted because my phone is around me. Some of my classmates go on their phones in class and do not pay attention.

I’ve also realized I’ve been stuttering and mixing up my words a lot because I forgot how to talk normally. I haven’t been socializing as much. I only casually send quick texts. If I were to be in person, I would be talking to my friends a lot.

There is a lot that I’ve learned about myself this year. I learned that I lost my socializing skills but I do better in school virtually. I want to go back to school in-person. There are still a bunch of problems I have about learning virtually, but there are also a lot of good things about learning virtually. I still decided not to go back because there is only a few months of school left and virtual learning seems like the best option for me right now.

 I miss walking down the hall and seeing people that I don’t know. I can’t wait to go back to school, but not just yet.

About the author

Hello! My name is Lune, and I am a student at Olney Elementary. I’m eleven years old and I like to write and do photography.