After being in quarantine for five months, students finally were able to come back to school in August, but being in quarantine didn’t stop there. Many students still are sent back home due to other students in their class showing symptoms of the Coronavirus. Some students believe it is affecting their ability to learn especially since once they get sent home they have to switch to online learning.

Madison Phelps, a student at Cape Central High School said, “I feel like my learning experience (at home) was worse because whenever I came back, I felt like I wasn’t as involved in the learning and everyone knew more information than I did,” when she talked about her experience of switching into online learning. She mentioned how she felt like her classes online moved a lot faster than the regular hours of school, but she felt like she wasn’t getting as much information as she would have if she was at school learning with all the other students.

Phelps also spoke about how she enjoys in-person learning better because she gets a chance to actually interact with her teachers right away, and she doesn’t have to wait for them to email her back if she is confused about something that she’s working on. She missed being able to socialize with her friends and classmates. She also felt that it affected her negatively due to all the activities she missed while being quarantined. Phelps said, “It affected me negatively because I missed six volleyball games and the football game against Jackson.”

Nora Fleming at edutopia.org wrote how students are affected academically all over the world through online learning. According to Fleming, some students are thriving during online learning. She says it has fewer distractions and students can be more focused while doing their school work. She also says students enjoy that their schedules are more flexible, and they have the chance to take breaks when they need them. While other students are having a more difficult time learning online because it’s harder to adapt to it and some students believe it’s even more stressful than learning at school with all their other classmates.

Alyssa Park, a student enrolled in Tigers @ Home, believes that some subjects would be easier to grasp if she was learning them at school: “In certain classes, I feel like I would do better if I was at school rather than online.” Park expressed how she believed that some subjects can be harder online than others, but she also believes that it can be easier to comprehend other subjects because instead of asking a teacher the same question over and over. She can just go back and rewatch the video over the topic that she’s learning.

Online learning affects every student differently. For some students, it’s better because it gives them more time to focus on their work, and they enjoy not having as many distractions. For other students online, learning is more difficult because they are used to being at school with other students and interacting with their friends and classmates. The switch into online learning is something a lot of students are having to adapt to this year.