Jinwon Soul / Staff reporter
Now that most classes in school are being replaced by online classes because of Covid-19, students and teachers are feeling uncomfortable.
Since the current Pandemic Covid-19 has hit, most of the learnings are online for the students’ and teachers’ safety. Although each person has different ways of learning, most students and teachers are suffering from online classes for various reasons.
There are several articles on why students and teachers have difficulty learning online remotely, and by reading the reports, it was clear why the students and teachers were having trouble. Online learning is not only preventing students and teachers from learning and teaching effectively but also foster mental health struggles in students.
Students say that they are learning a lot less than they should and they are overwhelmed by the amount of work to do in such a short period. An article from Sonoma West, written by Laura Hagar Rush, shows what students think about the online remote learning system.
One of the interviewed grade 12 students in the article, Estrella Pacheco, mentions her concerns about learning through a single computer screen. However, it is important to keep in mind that there are some biases throughout the article. This article contains students’ personal opinions, not all students’ general opinions, so this article is biased.
“For the most part, I feel like it has just been overwhelming amounts of papers to fill in,” said Pacheco . “They are assigned on Mondays and due on Fridays and it just feels like a big pile of stuff. I do not think I have learned much in the process of filling in those papers, which is not going to be great later.”
“During this time, I feel like I am not really learning anything, but rather just being kept busy because by law I am still required to be educated,” said Nultemeier, another interviewed student. “I don’t feel I am learning at all, just staying busy.”
There are many reasons why students struggle to have online classes, but among them, the people who are the most uncomfortable with online learning are low-income students. Some students just don’t participate in online learning out of boredom, but many students with low-income are reluctant to attend classes even if they want to. For example, an article from The New York Times written by Dana Goldstein, Adam Popescu, and Nikole Hannah-Jones tells a story of a grade 11 student, Titilayo Aluko, who is having a hard time keeping up with her online classes because of her lack of access to technology.
“The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that fewer than half of their students are regularly participating.” writes Goldstein, Popescu, and Hannah-Jones. This clearly supports the statement that the low-income students having troubles learning online.
According to the New York Times, educators said that there are students that have dropped out of touch with schools completely. This shows that low-income families struggle the most when it comes to learning online. However, there could be some bias within the article. The author of this article could be part of a low-income family who is going through the struggle or could have a family member or a friend having troubles with online learning. The bias could be there to inform more people about the struggle that low-income students are going through during the current Pandemic.
Online classes are causing inconvenience not only to students but also to teachers. An article reported on Inside Higher ED written by Susan D. Blum talks about how she as a teacher is having problems teaching online. She says it is much harder to teach without the interactions between her and her students. Also, she mentions that most of the older aged teachers are not comfortable with using any kind of technology at all, and because of their lack of familiarity, it affects the quality of the class when they are teaching online.
“All the communicative signs that embodied students and I rely on are thinned, flattened, made more effortful, or entirely impossible,” writes Blum. This statement clearly shows that the teachers struggle to teach online because of the lack of proper interactions. This article written by Blum is entirely written with her perspective as a teacher and not all the teachers have the same ideas and beliefs.
All schools and classes have changed since the Corona Virus spread around the world. Every individuals’ thoughts may differ, but most people, including economically deficient people and teachers, are feeling uncomfortable with the newly introduced system. Unfortunately, there is nothing they can do but hope that the Pandemic will soon be finished and that the schools will go back to normal. It is an uncomfortable transition to make, but for the time being, teachers and students need to adapt as best as they can.