NEW YORK, NY— School in quarantine is horrible. It’s filled with kids who probably aren’t even paying attention to what the teachers are saying. It’s hard to even focus on what the teacher says, especially with the voice glitching.
It starts like this: we join a Google Meet. We have to listen to the teacher talking for 30 minutes. It’s kind of hard to listen to all that, I mean just listening to somebody talk about “educational information” with a computer in front of you when you could be watching YouTube or doing our homework or even playing a video game? Hard to resist. According to teachers, kids are staring directly at the teachers and giving them their full attention. And of course, memorizing every single concept that they are talking about. That was totally hard enough back at school, and now we’re on the computer so it’s even harder to memorize one concept, and to pay attention in class.
There was one time that our teacher kept getting disconnected. Everyone started to play annoying music and memes while off-mute so it was kind of madness on the Google Meet. I admit, I myself got into some of that action and started playing with Shrek memes.
It is true, we only have one or two of these 30-minute periods per day. I’m not upset about that part: if this lasted from 8:30am-3pm, I would go nuts from boredom.
Also, is it too much to ask that we have a pleasant conversation with friends?
Back in school, we could just have conversations with our friends. But now that we are online, the only time we can talk is if we have a question or we have an answer. The teachers keep an eye on the chat so you can’t really say anything interesting. For example, our social studies teacher spends the whole time telling us what to expect for the week and then has us answer a bunch of things, any talking there?
I wish… I could actually talk to my friends in the real classroom. (cont. on p. 20)
(cont. from p. 19) In remote learning, we have to stay muted the whole class except to ask a question. I could actually have a conversation with them in person and I could talk to them mostly whenever I wanted in the hallway and things. And now I can’t do that anymore. I can only talk to them online and have no freedom to say anything to anyone during a class. So technically the only thing I can say is something to correct people, answer a question, or ask a question.
Okay, so now you have all read the stuff I have talked about. Actually, you might have not stuck around to read everything… but who cares? Overall, I am saying that remote learning and live instruction is not nearly as good as normal school given that you can’t talk to your friends during class. It’s bad because normally you could pleasantly talk to them and you aren’t able to really talk to them during the live instruction, so you have to literally shut your teeth traps and listen to the teacher talking on and on, and on, and on…… and on… and on… and on… yawn… and on…yaaaawn…and oooooon… zzzzzzz…
Anyways, what was I saying? Oh yeah! I wish online school was “enjoyment related.” Also we are probably going to all get dragged into the next year online without realizing it. Because everything appears to need a conclusion, here’s mine: END THIS CRISIS AND LEAVE US ALONE COVID-19!
