The Stakes are High, Students are Failing with Distance Learning
Student Government Editorial
A pandemic has taken over the world, businesses are getting shut down, public places are unavailable, and schools are closing, causing them to do things from a distance. Distance learning is something new for everyone including teachers, staff, and students. No one expected things to escalate as quickly as it did, and we were all unprepared.
NHIS has come to a conclusion where students and their parents had the choice of hybrid learning or 100% online learning with Acellus. Students with hybrid learning had the option to come back to school when it was safe to do so and is continuing with learning from NHIS teachers with online resources. With this new learning style, the student failure rate has risen fairly high from both groups.
There are many different reasons why students are failing. Some may include that they’re waking up late, or just feel that going to class isn’t mandatory. Other reasons are that students are unmotivated to join the class and get the instructions they need to be successful in their classes. They would have assignments piled up in google classroom with no idea how to complete them. With distance learning, getting lost, and/or confused can happen quickly.
Creating a new schedule is something that had to be done, and no one is use to it yet. Some students are failing because they can never remember what time their classes start. I’ve had many of my classmates contact me asking what time our classes start daily. Some don’t make it on time and get marked absent, and they miss out on the day’s lesson.
Some may say that the focus is hard at home with everything going on while in class. But this can be resolved in many different ways. Staying in one room alone can help with the focus, and this can make it easier to pay attention to what is going on in the class. As parents, they should know that distance learning is difficult and shouldn’t put so much pressure on their children outside of school, especially when it comes to the responsibilities of their siblings.
Others may say that there is no understanding of how google classroom works, or how to get to their google meets. But with distance learning, most things that we are learning today are being taught with resources we used during regular school on campus. There are also ways to contact your teachers easily to ask questions about anything students are confused about.
Some solutions that could help out with the big problems with distance learning, could be to have points that could be earned by work that is being done in the Meets class. Also if students are confused with the times of class, there are schedules posted in many places available to both parents and students. This includes Instagram on many class accounts, the NHIS website, and sometimes even in your class google classroom.
In conclusion, NHIS grade rates are plummeting, students aren’t getting the education they need. With the difficulty of distance learning, if there is nothing done about it, not only will the grade rates go down, this can affect the school academically, graduation rates, and even the amount of students that may be held back a grade.