Is this practice round of remote learning foreshadowing?

With virtual comes scarce halls and cold lunches. Will the lights shut off for the rest of the year or is there hope for an in-person ending?

Picture by Morgan Covert

Three days is all they’ve told the students at Saint Joseph Highschool so far.  Three days with a set schedule between 9:00 AM and 12:00 PM. That is a span of 3 hours. All we were told was that this was a test run, just to see how it would flow. But what if it isn’t just a test run? What if we got an email Sunday night saying we have another week of this? 

“Virtual definitely has its ups and downs. I like having my own schedule. There are no hard deadlines other than just completion dates. Sometimes I miss seeing people every day, but I still don’t know if I would want to go back,” said Claire Colclough, SJHS virtual senior. Claire decided to choose virtual learning over in person due to COVID concerns, as most virtual kids did. 

But for in-person SJHS kids, they chose face-to-face for a reason—hearing the term “virtual” just a day or so ago, means nothing good. Especially because that’s what they told us March 13th.

“I was already expecting it to happen, there were already a lot of rumors about it,” said Madison Nutto, in-person senior. “We’ll probably stay virtual for a few months and then go back in-person since we have a spike in cases.” Madison chose in person because online learning can be difficult, and she wanted to stay connected with friends.

As of November 10th, we have 90 students in quarantine, 7 of which are positive. Anything past November 13th has yet to be announced, but it’s assumed to remain in-person.