Students Return Back To Campus After A Year of Virtual Learning

After a year of virtual learning, Del Norte students return to campus starting April 5th to finish off the 2020-21 school year.

For English teacher Melissa Darcey, the experience has been “bittersweet.” While she finds that it has been nice being back on campus with a sense of returning to normalcy, she misses seeing students in the hallways and hearing the morning song before first period. Despite being back on campus, Darcey claims school doesn’t feel the same due to limited interactions. Although she is able to see a handful of her students in person in her old teaching environment, Darcey explains that she finds it difficult to connect as much with them as she typically would before virtual learning. 

One of Darcey’s students Ava Brooks (‘22) claims that being able to return on campus where she used to spend so much of her time has been a “sigh of relief.” Prior to this year’s virtual learning experience, Brooks spent 30 or more hours a week on campus. She says the opportunity to return has given her “a new energy and optimistic outlook for potentially returning to normalcy in school, and everyday life as well.”

Aside from the aspect of returning to a familiar learning environment, Del Norte has put in place safety protocols. Darcey has found these precautions to be easily followed and noticed the biggest difference was getting used to wearing masks. Even though she is fully vaccinated, Darcey explains she has been more mindful of sanitizing her hands, touching too many surfaces, or standing too close to others for too long.

“I’m certainly pro-masks and understand their necessity, but they’re not easy for communicating for long periods of time,” Darcey said. In addition to the disadvantage on the communication side of things, Darcey mentions that she also misses seeing people’s smiles and easily recognizing students. She details how she failed to recognize a student who returned to campus due to her mask covering half of her face. Even though the student always had her camera on in the virtual environment and participated in class frequently, Darcey was shocked to recognize how much harder it was to pick out a person’s unique features while they’re wearing a mask.

Brooks says the biggest difference between her on-campus experience during a typical school year and this year is the learning environment. Despite being in the same physical environment, Brooks details the struggles with collaborative work in spaced-out classroom desks in addition to a majority of her peers participating over Zoom. 

“On Zoom, most people are afraid to talk in the breakout rooms and it usually only consists of a few hello’s and a question or two,” says Brooks. Being able to participate in the physical classroom has made it much easier for Brooks to communicate with her peers, even if she isn’t familiar with them like she might be during a typical year.

From a teacher’s perspective, Darcey has found that because of having to run both a virtual and physical class simultaneously, she tends to focus more on the digital students than those in class. With her attention torn between the two groups, Darcey worries that she is not giving her full attention to students.

Furthermore, Darcey has found the social distancing contributes to the disadvantages of her new teaching method. With her attention torn between virtual and in-person students, she finds it a challenge to fully attend to both groups of students. Managing her online students at her computer while also having to maintain her spot at the front of the classroom for students on campus has created new boundaries for Darcey that she didn’t experience prior to the virtual learning environment.

“There’s an unspoken rule in teaching that you should always be moving, walking around, and interacting with students,” Darcey says. Having to refrain from her typical teaching behavior—such as constantly interacting throughout the classroom—has contributed to her confidence as a teacher dropping, accompanying her worries of not teaching, supporting, and engaging with her students enough.

Having to go through trial-and-error over the last few months, Darcey has realized that this year taught us how important face-to-face interactions are. Brooks mentions that being able to talk to students has been a really big advantage for coming to school. Despite challenges that have come with the new hybrid learning experience, Darcey and Brooks are hopeful that all students will be able to return to campus next school year in an environment with students’ safety and mental health in mind.