While many districts struggled with how to reach their students during the pandemic, LVUSD led the way, implementing online distance learning system for the safety of staff and students. While this program has mitigated some learning loss on the part of students, many teachers acknowledge that the program doesn’t fully capture what makes in-person learning effective.

“Academically, the Zoom classroom offers an approximation of the in-person classroom,” said CHS Athletics Director Jon Palarz. “But, the whole life of the school has been lost in this era of distance learning.”

For many new teachers, this is their first experience of being a teacher at CHS. This limits the new teachers’ abilities to make connections with their new students and get adapted to CHS in-person.

“When I am working with students in person, they can gain so much information from the tone of voice and body language that is often lost in communicating virtually,” said CHS science teacher Ryon Barton. “This is my second year working at CHS and in my first year we transferred to online learning in March so I have never had the full year experience at school yet.”

    Despite this lack of human connection, virtual learning has forced teachers to adapt. Instructors do not have the same resources that they did in their classrooms, so they have had to find new ways to teach.

“If we go back to school I would like to implement the use of Google Classroom and Zoom,” said CHS physical education teacher Brian Collins. “It will help keep students with long term absences up to date.”

Although teachers are gaining some new skills and ideas for the future from distance learning, distance learning has its downsides in regards to student effort.

“I feel that students can easily get distracted during online learning,” said Mr. Barton. “They can easily mute their computers and turn off their cameras and not pay attention to school.”

When physically at school, tests and quizzes are closed-note with no outside or peer help. During distance learning, teachers have no choice but to make their tests and quizzes open-note because of the fact that students have so many resources at home.

“If I assign a test or quiz, it has to be open to notes, online access, and communication with classmates,” said Mr. Palarz. “It is more like a research activity rather than a memorization task