After returning from Spring Break, Lakota West students and teachers began online learning on Wednesday, March 25.
Originally set to be a three week period to end on April 3, the online learning was then extended through the end of the school year.
I recently went out to find out if the student body and Lakota West teachers prefer online schooling.
In a poll of 32 students total from each high school grade level, a clear majority of wanting to go back to school. About 72% or 23 people, for those who can’t do the math, said that they rather go to school than online learning. That leaves 28% or 9 people saying that prefer the online schooling than going to school.
Teachers seem to echo the student opinion. World history teacher Jason French says, “I’d much rather be in the classroom with my kids. As anyone who knows me knows, a lot of my teaching comes from personal connections and relating present day lives to history,” also adding in from a teacher’s point of view that “remote learning also makes it harder for teachers to cover all the material they normally would, this has resulted in me having to cut some of my favorite stuff out of 4th quarter.” Another administrator who teaches math says that for her, “ the hardest part is the reliability factor. Trusting that students are putting their best effort into learning the material and not just doing it to do it. Since everything is done at home we put a lot more trust in you as students to really take the time to understand it and learn it, but we know how many resources students can use to find answers and just use those to submit work.” However, she also sees the positive in online learning when she says that, “I know I have a lot of students that, when they go to college, some of their courses are offered online so the one benefit is getting some experience of how to manage your time and [seeing] what online learning looks like.”
We’ll soon learn if the online schooling will continue in the fall or if we will head back to school. However, for the majority of the students and teachers they hope that in September they’ll find themselves walking in the school halls.
