Friday October 9, 2020 marks the end of the first quarter. My, what a quarter it has been.

Students started the year off with a spread out orientation where students would arrive on one of five days to get supplies, meet teachers, and become orientated to the new age of learning. Students learned how the new canvas interface worked and became more and more ready to start the year off online, but in a new way with last year. Assignments were no longer simply going to be pushed out by teachers, completed by students, and then turned in anymore like e-learning in the past. Now, teachers were able to start virtual meetings where they could have their students attend attend class remotely all while still being able to see one another, being able to watch their teacher and presentations the teacher makes. Truly this has been a new age of learning.

This lasted for a while until things switched over to hybrid learning.During hybrid learning, half of the students were able to attend school in person at a single time. The way this worked was first, students were separated into groups A, B, and C. Group A would attend school in person for Monday and Tuesday of the week while Group B attended the same classes online. Wednesday was students’ flex day to catch up on assignments from the week. Then, on Thursday and Friday group B would attend class in person, while group A attended classes online. This limited the amount of students in the building, and helped spread students out within the classrooms which is what was needed. Some teachers, however, did not like this mode, as they felt that this created double the work load for them as some teachers would have remote students and in-person students working on completely different activities. Then after a few weeks of hybrid learning, it was then time to go back to in person learning for the last two weeks of the quarter.

Things have been ever-changing for both Saint Joseph High School’s students as well as the staff. During all of this, the Saint Joe family has been very proactive and flexible in being able to facilitate all of this and make it all work. It has been a crazy first quarter for everyone here, and we are all ready to take on quarter two and its possible changes, and any trials and tribulations that it may have to offer. Good luck Saint Joe!