For the past 18 months of our education, students have changed in regards to our study habits, attention span, and overall drive to do our work when it comes to school. We can acknowledge that last year we might have slacked off on a test or two and called in “sick” a little more than was necessary, but should we be punished for that now?

   As we are getting back into the groove of things, students are having to not only relearn how to interact with teachers again but we are also having to re-teach our brains to retain information and apply it in a classroom setting. We as students feel there are some things that teachers could do to help us get to where we need to be to perform at our best.

  Post-Covid school is completely different from how it used to be before Covid, and it should be treated as such. As students, it feels as though teachers are choosing to ignore the gap in our education and just continue teaching like normal. With faster deadlines and higher standards than were placed on us last year, we find ourselves falling behind. Some teachers have chosen to place work both on Canvas as well as assigning work in class. When teachers don’t tell us we have work on Canvas, we are not going to automatically know to look because we assume our work will only be in school. 

  Another issue with the re-integration is the treatment of absences. We acknowledge that there may have been a few sick day fibs during Covid school, but things have changed. Some teachers have chosen to adopt the absence policy of work being due by 3:00pm whether you are at school or not. We understand that teachers want to keep us on track with the class, but setting an unrealistic due date while we are absent or returning from an absence will not help us do that. If teachers would go back to the original policy that gives us an equal number of days we missed to make up the assignments, there would be a lot less missing work. 

   It is understandable for teachers to be worried that we will fall behind in our learning because the reality is that we did, but speeding up the curriculum now isn’t going to make up for that lost time. We as students have noticed that some teachers are assigning more work and giving tests faster than they usually do. This may be due to the classes we are choosing to take, but we still need more time to get back into the groove of normal school, whether it be in the form of “brain-breaks” or just a catch up day here and there.

  At the end of the day, there are things that both students and teachers could be doing to smooth the jump back into in-person school. So if we work together and try our best, we as a school will eventually get back to our pre-Covid normal.