Ok disclaimer: I know none of us have been through this situation of being in a pandemic before, so we are all learning as we go. I am also not trying to bash any teachers or staff or administration as I write this. 

It’s the “not understanding we have more than just your class” for me. It’s the having “all my work due on the same two days” for me. It’s the “lack of knowledge on how to use google classroom effectively” for me. It’s the “still having to come to the class in person if the teacher is all online” for me. It’s the “unnecessarily long and non-beneficial google meeting” for me. It’s the “school not giving me an up-to-par education and preparation for life” for me. 

Who would’ve thought the pandemic would last this long and we would have to do school from home or partly from home. It’s probably safe to say that everyone wants to be able to go back to school 100% safely, however that probably won’t happen for a while let’s be honest. 

So the vibe right now is that school is not the move. Students are not being effectively taught and a good amount of the work that we are being given is just unnecessary busywork. Ok, I understand that it is hard to teach and accommodate students who are 100% remote as well as the hybrid kids, however, this just isn’t working. 

On the Web’s Instagram page, we put out a few polls for the students to respond to and what they wished teachers would understand; here are some of the results. 

Student 1 says “Busy work doesn’t help students learn as much as you think.”

Student 2 says “We don’t like the small daily projects and are less likely to do them because it’s just busywork. But the longer projects gives us something to actually strive for and motivates us to work.”

Student 3 says “Adding more assignments doesn’t make up for the fact that we only see them (the teachers) half of the time.”

Student 4 says: “It’s difficult to complete the asynchronous work when we have zero in person instruction.”

Student 5 says: “Sometimes a short passage can convey the same meaning as a 400-page book.”

We asked students if they thought they were getting too much of a workload put on them, 80% or close to the 100 students who responded to the polls said that they were in fact getting too much; and 79% thought they were getting more busywork than necessary. That should speak for itself. 

As a senior who is in the applying to college and trying to figure what they want to even do with their life after graduation, school is just a distraction from the world that is moving and changing every minute. I feel like this is especially true because of this global pandemic and the presidential election season is upon us. Who knows what will really happen and this busywork that we are all being given should not be our main priority even though some teachers make it out to be. On behalf of the student body, this is unfair. 

Some teachers really are saying all these things about ‘oh I’m sorry this is your high school experience’ and ‘i’m sure these are difficult times for you and your family’ then they go and assign 4 different things all due the next day. As students, we don’t deserve to have this be our education right now. There is hardly anything to be benefiting us right now. How are we supposed to be prepared for life after the pandemic?