Online school is a constantly changing, difficult time to manage. Many students are struggling with finding a good place to sit down for the day and learn. It gets even harder to deal with when siblings are at home doing school at the same time.
A majority of students are doing school at home by themselves since their parents go to work during the day. Many families are having to figure out how to do school with WIFI issues, interruptions, and noise.
The Thorp family consists of Jessie Thorp, sr., Eloise Thorp, soph., and Callum Thorp, fr. With all three siblings in the house, they have had to deal with adjusting to online as an individual and as a family.
The Thorps live in an older house which makes it easy to hear the other siblings meetings, but they try to separate as much as possible.
“We separate ourselves by staying in our own rooms and working at our desks,” Jessie said. “If it gets too loud, we close our doors if needed.”
One of the annoying things of all doing school in one house, is that when one person gets kicked out of their meeting, both of the other siblings do too.
“One of us has to go reboot the internet in hopes that after a few minutes our computers will connect to the WiFi and we can get back to our meetings,” Jessie said.
Callum, the youngest sibling, agrees with his oldest sister that Teams can be irritating to cooperate with, especially with all the tech problems that students and teachers deal with every day. Callum doesn't enjoy online school and desperately wishes to go back in person.
“I need interaction with others and to participate in assignments that are hands-on rather than typing all of my work,” Callum said.
On the other hand, Eloise, the middle child, enjoys online school a little more than her other two siblings. She can go at her own pace and it’s a lot more peaceful being by herself. The Thorp siblings do a pretty decent job of staying focused on their own classes, so the biggest distraction is more leeway for the devices they have at home.
One positive side to the at-home learning situation is more bonding time with siblings.
“We were all fortunate enough to have similar meeting schedules and get second lunch,” Elosie said. “It’s nice we have time in the day to take a break from our computers and bond with each other in that span of a 45 minute lunch period.”
Online school has definitely been a learning experience for all of the students and teachers. From the constant internet connection issues and technical difficulties, everyone has had to persevere and get through whatever obstacle is in the way as easily as they can.
With the first nine weeks almost finished, many people have a routine, but with the new hybrid plan there will be even more new adjustments to make.