Around a week ago the YRDSB announced that school closures would be extended to May 29th when they will reevaluate the COVID-19 situation. In the meantime, they’ve provided some updated information and online learning is continuing. Here are somethings about the current school situation that I’d like to share this week.
The first thing is one of the statements that the board has on their “Novel Coronavirus FAQ” page regarding school marks. They say that “end of year marks can only remain the same or increase based on work completed from April 6 and onward. This means that no matter how badly you do on your future assignments your mark cannot go down. In my opinion, this seems like a very strange move to make by the school board because it doesn’t give students much motivation to continue on with their school work. I know some of my friends don’t really feel the need to do school work if they already have high marks. For me, I’ll still continue the work, but it feels like sometimes I’m just wasting my time doing the work.
A complaint I have about the lessons and work that I’ve been getting. I feel like the amount of work that’s being assigned from teachers is completely different from before. For some subjects, the amount of work being assigned each day is sometimes too much. It gets annoying sometimes when the teachers don’t make things easily accessible to see because sometimes I find out that there was something assigned that I didn’t even know about.
Another thing that I personally don’t really like is how communication is done. Whenever I email my teachers about a question I have, I always get really vague feedback or they just repeat whatever’s written on the lesson post. Sometimes I even see classmates ask questions on assignment posts where the teacher hasn’t even responded in days. I’ve also had to deal with tasks done in pairs where my assigned partner doesn’t respond to messages or emails. I messaged my teacher and only then did I get a response from my partner even though the task was overdue.
Overall, I’ve found this online learning to be a total circus. Every day it’s like the teachers are just trying to throw material at the students so that they get through the curriculum. I feel as if I’m not learning anything, and there’s zero motivation for me to continue working.
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