A Regent Park High School Student Speaks on the Effect of Virtual Learning

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A high school student from Regent Park shares his opinions on virtual learning throughout this pandemic.

As everyone knows the world has not been the same since the start of the pandemic and many essential areas like schools, shopping malls, and restaurants have shut down. We have had to come up with alternatives for these things and for schools specifically we have online virtual learning as an alternative for going to school. For many this has been fine but plenty of students and teachers believe that it is not doing the job, some students have even felt like they did not learn anything at all and are scared because they believe that they are not prepared for the years to come.

As vaccines are getting handed out and cases are going down daily, schools in Ontario are set to resume real life learning in September. This leaves the question how much have students remembered from virtual learning and will students feel prepared for the years to come, especially those who are entering post - secondary school for the first time. 

Abel, a student at Jarvis Collegiate Institute, is someone that prefers hands-on work and seeing things in real life but has managed to transition into online learning seamlessly and believes that students are over exaggerating concerns. Abel thinks that the anxiety about on-line teaching stems more from lack of effort if anything. He believes that since teachers can not really see you and guide you to stay on target that students have no motivation to actually do any work, or pay attention, so they blame it on the fact that learning online is hard for them instead of putting in the effort to pay attention.

I am a highschool student myself who attends Jarvis and at times I have struggled with online learning. This year our school was considering the quad system where you would have two classes a semester which is about two months long and rotate through four semesters. The problem with this was everything was very rushed and it would be hard for many students including myself to keep up since we were getting new assignments every other day, and we would have to learn a lot of concepts all in a short period of time making it hard to remember everything. For students who struggled on-line and were already behind this would have made it even more difficult for them to keep up. 

Now I am happy to say that not only has my school decided against the quad system but now that more than half of Canada’s population is fully vaccinated and the number is going up daily, schools in Ontario are set to open this September!  Whether students enjoyed online school, or had trouble with it, I'm sure everyone misses the aspect of being at school with friends, I know I can’t wait for it.

 

Written by
Robael Bereket

Journalist
FOCUS Media Arts Centre


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