The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
As a sixth-grader who has been participating in school from home for over six weeks, I have figured out that some things about it are good and others aren’t so good. We can definitely learn from this and use our experiences to shape what school looks like in the future.
There are some pros of having school at home. One advantage is that school is at home, and it’s comfortable here. For example, I built a fort and I slept in it on a school night, something I would not do on regular school nights. Also, because I’m having school at home I have a lot more free time.
Having all this free time has given me the opportunity to ride my bike more, which has really helped me slim down. Another upside is that I get to work on my hobbies, like cooking, more often. At the beginning of quarantine, my macaroons where flat and ugly, but now, after several batches, they’re almost perfect.
Also, I have appreciated not seeing the people I don’t enjoy being around at school.
Finally, I get to see nature more.
For example, today while riding my bike I saw a hawk with a lizard in its claws fly overhead.
There also are some cons to the whole quarantine business. One drawback is that I miss my friends and teachers. I miss seeing them every day and doing my same daily routine. For home schooling, we use Zoom and it’s not always the best. It’s hard to hear every one in class. It’s also hard to remember to go to all of my Zoom meetings. Another bummer is that we aren’t learning new things. It is the last quarter and we are only doing review. But it’s still hard.
When we go back to having regular school, it won’t be the same as before all of this coronavirus stuff. I think we could learn from the school-from-home experience and try to retain the best of both traditional school and home schooling in the future.
I have realized that I don’t need to be in school for seven hours a day to get everything done. I would like to propose that we could either only go to school every other day or have a shorter school day. This would mean I’d still have time in my day for things like my bike rides and baking.
It would also mean I see the people I like more than I have been able to lately, and see the people I don’t enjoy less than I used to.
Finally, less hours in school would mean more hours outside, with the chance to see more hawks and lizards.
Right now, we still don’t know if we will go back to school in the fall. I hope administrators planning for the fall think about the pros and cons of home schooling.
I think that there are things we have learned from this recent, crazy school-from-home experience that could make every school day better.
