Students at Pine Grove Area High School are being faced with a new challenge: online schooling. While nobody could have imagined a year ago that every student across the country would be educated from home, that’s exactly what’s happening. At the end of the 2019-2020 school year, PGASD converted to totally online schooling in an effort to keep people safe while continuing students’ education. Mckoy Koch, Senior, says, “I would definitely say it affected me in a negative way. I had little motivation to do the work.” When asked about the blended learning format that Pine Grove is currently using, Koch says, “I think it is as good as it can be with the current situation. However, I would much prefer a full 5 day school week because I still feel less motivated on the off days.”

Students attending STC were also affected, though not as severely. Adam Kemmerling, a Junior at Pine Grove Area High School attending STC, says, “COVID hasn’t affected Tech too much. It’s like we are right back to normal again.” Students are forced to wear masks and socially distance when possible, though they are in-class every day as opposed to a blended format. “It’s funny how much society adapted to the current situation. The most I can say about all of this is that the masks are annoying,” Kemmerling says.

With the current state of the world, educational institutions around the world are faced with the challenge of providing students with a quality education in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Online schooling is a solution that is being tried across the country as an alternative to in-school or “traditional” schooling. While online education does help reduce the spread of COVID-19 by not packing students into a building together, it is a different experience from traditional schooling entirely. It is more difficult to directly speak with a teacher and ask questions, which is a vital part of the learning process for some students. With Pine Grove Area School District’s blended format for this school year, students spend half their time learning at home and have the other half to speak with teachers and interact in person. While this is still a complex situation, students’ education isn’t being held back by the limitations of purely online schooling. There’s a lot of uncertainty currently, but hopefully kids can get back in the classroom full-time sooner rather than later.