This school year has been a wild ride, from having only half a week of school for the entire first semester to jumping into school full time for the second. This second semester has prevalently shown the biggest issue, the education system’s seemingly little sympathy for students, as we’ve been more or less the same as pre-COVID schooling.  

As the year has progressed the more and more I’ve seen that the education system tries to act as if everything is back to normal, when realistically it’s far from that. Many students’ lives outside of school have been changed due to the ongoing pandemic. While the district has tried to do activities within Advisory, many would agree it seems to be the bare minimum required and are often not very engaging. 

An idea to help with this is to make resources such as student-led activities more prevalent for students. Then even after this trivial period has ended, is to keep those around to help benefit future students. 

Furthermore there has been seemingly little adaptation done by the system to accommodate. While they have done prevention measures against COVID, such as wiping tables and cleaning doors, nothing has changed within the school day, so it’s still the same school structure of being in person for seven hours a day, five days a week. Finals remain, and a seemingly extended work load and academic pressure to try and make up for last semester Is still very prevalent. Hard-to-manage academic pressure in a time such as these leads to overworking and frustration lowering the work ethic of many. Crunching deadlines this year are a burden on many students.  

The solution seems obvious and simple: lower the academic pressure students face by giving more resources to students and make the ones we have highlighted more. While also being more graceful with the workload for teachers, and possibly, though hard, work out some sort of new school day with work time built in.

The education system highlighted its biggest problem by jumping back into school like nothing has happened and students’ situations have remained the same as previous years. It’s not an absolute loss though. We can learn from it and implement solutions that can apply to future classes as well, promoting future growth for students.