With winter comes unpredictable weather, making it exceedingly difficult for students and staff to get to school. Instead of calling for the usual snow day, the Pennsylvania Department of Education began implementing Flexible Instruction Days (FID), where students log into classes on their Chromebooks and learn from home. While the idea is ingenious, how do students handle it in practice?
FID days are challenging because students are forced to be attentive in class while in a cozy home environment. Most people choose to join their Google Meet from the comfort of their bed, making sleepiness a huge battle for remote learning days. An advantage of learning from the classroom is the limited amount of distractions students are faced with. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case when they’re tasked with a FID day.
“It’s difficult to learn when we have a FID day because there are so many distractions in my room, from my phone to my TV and even my window. Because you’re at home all day, you never have a moment between school and home, so making time for homework is hard,” comments Arts and Entertainment Editor Katherine Drezewski.
At school, every second of each lesson counts. Learning from home inhibits the students’ ability to take away vital information from lessons because the physicality of in-person learning is taken away from them.
Even for teachers, attempting to teach a lesson to a computer screen can be difficult. The lack of interaction between students and teachers makes learning troublesome, so many teachers end up needing to go over information from the day prior to check for understanding.
Opinion Editor Lita Feriozzi adds, “Teachers should try to push important lessons to the back burner when we have FID days. Obviously, we still need to have a lesson, but it’s going to be hard for people to focus as it is.”
In order to learn from home more effectively, students can try simple strategies such as getting ready in the morning as though it’s a normal school day. The idea behind this technique is that getting dressed motivates people to get work done.
“Think about the consequences of not getting work done. It’s easy to just not do anything, but it comes at a cost,” says Staff Writer Georgia Poach.
Alternatively, students may find it helpful to turn off their phones to concentrate on schoolwork better. Even setting it out of reach proves to be effective.
Sometimes it can be helpful to switch up the workspace, so instead of attempting to learn from the bed, try moving to a desk. Having work laid out on a desk increases productivity and focus. Even relocating to the kitchen would help tremendously.
While predicting FID days is impossible, managing them is far from it. Stay warm, Hillers!
