By Sunny Li’ 22
For the first time since the founding of St.Mark’s, the school year has started with no students physically present on campus. Taking courses fully online, nevertheless, was not anew to any of us here. Since as early as March, St.Markers have been asked to live remotely from school. After months and months of hoping to reunite on campus and to start our normal lives, the pandemic still left us scattered around the world. During the spring of last year when we were physically apart from one another, it was not uncommon for us to feel isolated and to lack self-motivation. In times like this, a structural lifestyle became indispensable to our healthy mindsets. As classes constitute the main part of our lives, the St.Mark’s schedule plays a pivotal rule in shaping our daily routine, and therefore, helping us with effective learning.
The last school year ended with online learning. Considering how students might not focus as well as they did with in-person learning, St.Mark’s designed each class to meet for only short periods of time—two twenty-minute blocks each week. Teachers also held asynchronous sessions and office hours for those who need additional help. With little time meeting as a class, all students were encouraged to learn and complete assignments in their own times. Under this schedule, classes served as a check-in meeting and were mostly for group discussions. Certainly, there was a lot of flexibility for students in deciding their own tasks. Especially, with the cancellation of all sports events, each student had plenty of time dedicated to academic work. Personally, I found myself working productively under such a schedule—a minimum meeting time with sufficient time for self-learning.
In this new school year of 2020-21, St.Mark’s had adopted a new class schedule that resembled a normal in-person learning schedule. Meanwhile, the school aimed to accommodate the different time zones that students are located in: classes follow the usual color-block schedule with each class meeting three times a week—two long blocks and one short block. For international students, especially those located in Asia, not all three classes are required. They are given the option or even encouraged to “miss” any classes after 12:00 pm EST. While sticking to long blocks that go up to ninety minutes, the schedule allows international students to learn in times that best work for them. In my opinion, however, meeting for longer periods of time served as a disadvantage for one to focus. Paying full attention to online classes was already more challenging than learning in person. Short meetings can still instigate active thinking and volunteering responses in class; long meeting blocks, on the other hand, easily become dull for some students in the end. Another challenge faced by all students is the new mode of hybrid learning. Teachers need to interact with students who are learning online while they write on the whiteboard, assign groups, and teach in-person students. The already complicated issue with online learning now adds up with the task of teaching in-person students in the most effective way. Oftentimes, technical difficulties emerge, including bad sound quality and bad location of the camera. Without being able to fully participate in class due to these technical issues, online students could easily feel “left-out” or be easily distracted by things unrelated to class.
There is no perfect solution in times like this. As much as every one of us is eager to get back to normal school life, we need to first devote our energy to cope with the difficulties in remote learning. Full attention, self-motivation, productivity, these qualities that were once present in our school lives become what we need to search for deliberately in today’s learning. Despite the challenges we face, I’m fully confident that St.Markers will overcome them and discover a best learning attitude. After all, we do what we do best. Age Quod Agis!
