Jesse Thweatt, 10th grade, Marshall County High School
The United States is facing an unprecedented time. There has not been a situation like this in over one hundred years. Businesses are struggling, cities have become ghost-towns as people hide from a virus. It sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel, however this is the reality we now face. As a result, our school systems have made the call to shut down until the curve flattens, as to protect their student body and their educators. Though they have elected to close the doors to their campuses temporarily, school is still, kind of, happening. Through what I believe to be the most inefficient, and frankly unnecessarily frustrating system, the schools are still pumping out school work, exams, and activities during the pandemic. Students are stressed, and scared, and on top of all that, they still have that huge science project due Friday. We should postpone educational assignments until we can actually go back to school, because some kids are just going to refuse to do it anyway, and others are going to run themselves ragged trying.
As someone who usually spends roughly eight hours a day locked in a building with other kids in my age group, I know how they think. I know that some of them are hard workers, already having their whole lives planned out, down to and including exactly how many kids they want. Others, which I will be focusing on for the foreseeable paragraph, don’t care. They see school as a place to socialize, and nothing more. I do not intend to make fun of or shame these kids. To each his own; they are living life how it makes them happy. However, in the context of NTI schooling, I doubt the work ethic of some kids. They see this as some form of extended spring break, taking this time to do anything except schoolwork. We were told when NTI started that the fewer people who participated, the more days we would have to genuinely make up when school is back in regular session. I honestly see this as some form of group punishment, but that’s for another time. It would be so much easier for the school system to just call it off for the rest of the year and try again, than it would be to try and corral everyone back into school in June.
On the opposite end of the aforementioned spectrum, we have the kids who are going to overheat like an old laptop and explode from all this. I personally am not able to cope well with change, and online schooling is not an option for me because I do not retain information as easily when it’s presented to me in this way. I need to be able to ask questions, have someone read over my work, maybe even give a bit of encouragement. I know that I am not the only one; most of my friends are like this and are struggling too. These are already incredibly stressful times, and we are now being made to completely change our style of learning, and still make good grades. It’s borderline impossible, and an honestly unfair task. For some kids, this is going to wind up being the first low grade they ever receive in their lives, by no fault of their own. We need to reevaluate, and stop with NTI, even if just to protect the already strained mental health of the student body.
Now, some might say that doing NTI is the best option, and what we need to be doing right now. People talk of keeping a sense of normalcy to keep doing school work, which keeps kids in a routine. To that I say, “There is no normalcy here.” Almost no one in our school does online classes. The only kids who this is normal for are the kids who do MC Home. Switching to online classes fails to keep normalcy for most of our student body. Practically none of us are used to online classes, and the ones who are, have not done them since middle school. The best option would be to hold off classes until we can re-open, or completely call off the rest of the year.
So, now we’ve examined how NTI is actually functioning. It’s much different than we’d hoped, and isn’t working. This is a really difficult time, not just for school kids. We eventually will pull through this, but who knows when that’s going to be. We have to find a better way to accommodate everyone: the students who will not do their work, the students who will try too hard, and the teachers who have to try and be the Noah on the ark of this situation.