Virtual school was introduced nationwide during the Covid-19 pandemic back in March 2020. Since then, online school has been seen as an alternative to in-person school that keeps students safe in case of contagious sickness throughout school or bad weather making the roads a hazard, particularly for new student drivers. Virtual days are now a new alternative to snow days and they are a massive disappointment for students. Having a snow day used to be something that was the coolest thing when we were younger. Having all day to play video games with your friends, go outside in the snow, or just relax on your day off was so great because of the rarity of these days. Now, this excitement and fun are ruined all because of the creation of the virtual day. And there is an easy remedy.
Snow days should be snow days, not virtual school days.
Many of the virtual classes that we have to attend are consumed by errors and technical difficulties from students and teachers. Students along with teachers are very out of practice with working with websites such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. They have not consistently had virtual school days using one of these websites since the spring of 2020. During the pandemic when we were in virtual class every day, we didn’t have a hard time fixing microphones or cameras because we had more practice, but that was four years ago. Now we are all rusty. Issues like broken cameras, dysfunctional microphones, and the inability to join meetings are big problems for virtual school days. They also hold back the performance of classes, seeing as there are only 1-2 virtual school days per year. Students and teachers are given no reason to learn to solve these issues. The short 35-minute classes are eaten up by technical difficulties, and 5-10 minutes of attendance and teachers telling students to turn their cameras on.
Snow days are important for students as the day off is a way to clear their minds and help improve their mental health and stress. An unscheduled day off from school is a great way for students to recharge in the middle of the week. Being able to sleep in and not worry about the stress of school for a day gives students a chance to get ahead. For many students, it is difficult to balance sports and school, but having a whole day it can give you much more time for getting schoolwork done. Along with this, it’s also very nostalgic to get a snow day. Everyone remembers snow days when we were little. Sledding with friends, snowball fights with siblings, and building a snowman with parents are all things that we can remember doing and can still do to feel the joy of being a little kid again.
Those in favor of virtual days would argue that the idea of the virtual day is for classes with a schedule, like AP or ACC classes to get moved forward and to make sure that they are not behind. While this does make sense and is understandable for sure, with how short the classes are, and how hard doing a normal 75 minutes is, the virtual day doesn’t work. If an assignment for a class is really necessary, it would be easier if the assignment and directions were posted online for students to complete. This would help avoid the annoying day of having virtual classes for students with no AP classes that day.
Although the virtual days are not rigorous and virtual days are not even as close to the same challenge that a full in-person day is, it is still a massive bummer to have to wake up on what should be a snow day to just attend a throwaway class that nothing gets accomplished in.
