With school having already been declared virtual for the rest of the year, students are still figuring out how to navigate online classes and are waiting to find out when they will be able to return to live classrooms and daily social interaction. So, how has virtual learning been so far and when will we return to school? How will school setup change? Will there be fall sports?

As soon as students were told that classes would be continued online, there were concerns over attendance, workload, and how to communicate with teachers on things like submitting work and confusion on lessons.

Owen Smith, 11, said of online schooling that, “It’s been pretty good, but it’s definitely a lot harder to complete certain assignments without an actual teacher, Owen Smith, 11, said.

As most students can understand, it’s difficult to do an assignment when you don’t understand the content, and when it may take a teacher some time to answer your questions.

Dylan Panganiban, 9, touched on the subject of fall sports and how they would be run.

“I think that if we are given the green light to go back to school normally, then after school practices should be like normal.”

Fall sports like swimming, football, volleyball, and cross-country all have meets or games that would certainly not be able to happen if restrictions were placed on school and after school activities like sports and clubs.

As for the teachers, it’s both good and bad. Tenth grader John Purcell’s father is a math teacher at Freedom, and John said, “If the students are having trouble with assignments he messages them back. He’s not having much trouble but some students aren’t doing any work.”

Purcell knows, as a student himself and with an educator as a parent, the importance of face to face interaction when it comes to learning. In general, it’s harder to learn without a teacher to guide you in each step of the learning process.

One of the biggest questions about returning to school in the fall considers if there will be any restrictions on the campus, possibly aiming to keep students farther apart or to keep the campus cleaner.

“Considering there are so many students at our school, I don’t think there is much they can do,” Keira Eckhardt, 10, said.

“They may require sanitation before and after lunch, or assign students to clean their desks at the end of the period.”

This idea also brings up when we may be allowed to return to schools, and how safe it will be.

However, coronavirus and health concerns aside, when asked what the one thing they miss most, Eckhardt added, “I miss being around my friends and having the chance to talk to them in person.”