Rachel Singleton

Editor-in-Chief

Having previously been homeschooled as a kid, I did not think it would be difficult to continue learning remotely. However, after living through these past few weeks, I learned that I was very wrong. Not only is it challenging to keep up communication with teachers regarding assignments, it has also been a struggle to simply have motivation to do my school work. 

It has been difficult to train my brain to recognize my home as a place of learning. Whenever I sit down to read a textbook or annotate an article, my brain wanders, and I end up getting nothing done. While I put in the effort to be productive, following through proves to be difficult. 

Communication with teachers has also been a struggle for me. While teachers can not assign work until April 14, some have suggested work that I have been trying to keep up with. I have already experienced a few bumps in this new form of learning including doing the completely wrong assignment, confusion over how to do a particular assignment and so forth. 

Overall, remote learning has not been easy. To those of you in a similar situation, hold tight. The only thing you can do right now is wait and follow what the school board asks of you. If you have any concerns, call your school and contact your school board members.  

Catherine Smith

Website Editor

COVID-19  made me realize the importance and responsibilities of journalists during a period of crisis. As I covered the pandemic for our school online newspaper, I have been constantly learning and improving my skills as a journalist.

Updates concerning COVID-19 always surprises me because it is such a fast paced virus with constantly changing information. Almost everyday something new is implemented to prevent the increase of cases and protect citizens. This situation poses many unanswered questions. It became the job of publications to keep everyone informed, so why not student journalists as well?

Reporting about COVID-19 is a constant job that requires a lot of time and effort, but it is an important one. I have also known that fact checking and following beats are necessary, but when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, this became more apparent. Journalists say it is their duty to report, and this has become true for me when I took on covering COVID-19 news right here in our community. 

Ashley Halbrook

Staff Reporter

Online school is something I am familiar with due to being homeschooled through eighth grade. But during this pandemic the one thing that has been difficult for me is lack of motivation. 

COVID-19 causes me daily stress and makes focusing on school work difficult. While this is not the correct attitude to have towards school, I do find myself frequently worrying about other things over school. Such as my friends and family getting sick. Especially my mom, due to her having prior health problems, specifically with her heart and lungs. So this is a distraction from the school assignments I do have . But most of my teachers have not started teaching or given any information about what’s going to happen after April 14. So far, my journalism class is the only class that I have active communication with, and know what’s going on in the class.

Speaking of communication, I am struggling with communication with my teachers because of lack of technology.  I share a computer with a few of my siblings so accessing Blackboard and emails has become hard since everyone needs the computer daily. I also have a concern for those who do not have the necessary technology to continue online learning. 

But besides those things, it has been comforting to hear from classmates and teachers about their experiences and having the opportunity to encourage each other.  I am unsure of how the school schedule will turn out after April 14, but I am hoping for it to go smoothly. 

Jenna Minter 

Staff Reporter

I am a people person, so when I work on something in school, I prefer to be around people. Being around people helps me focus on tasks in school because working in a group means you have more minds than just your own to get work done. Being at home, I don’t really have that option.

Having a set schedule with each high school class worked for me. The new distance learning procedure basically says to work at your own pace with very little learning material at a time and to only do about an hour of work for each class throughout the week.With that little time a week, I’m nervous I won’t be able to really learn anything and, therefore, be behind for the coming school year.

Starting April 14th,  none of the work we do for school will be counted which gives me no motivation to do it since none of it will really matter in the long haul. I know learning will always matter whether graded or not, it still will provide kind of a mental block for me in a way.