End of Term 1: How are people feeling about in-person school?

Hustle and bustle returns to Mountain View High School hallways as both students and teachers have returned to in-person school during the time of the pandemic. Flashback to earlier this year on March 13th, the school had just completed its third term when disaster struck. For the next five and a half months, everyone was put on quarantine, and online learning began. Then, it was time for school to start up again.

With the season of learning coming back up, there was a lot of worry about how this year would go–whether it would still be online or everyone could go back in-person. When the in-person learning announcement happened, a lot of people were ready to come back. 

It has been two and a half months now since school started, and people are still pretty happy to be back in the school– with some drawbacks of course. The photography teacher, Mrs. Natalie Ward, said, “I loved actually seeing my students in-person.” As it may actually be a little set back to be back, as students and teachers have to stay home if they are sick, and need to be quarantined if exposed, the staff is still trying to get the situation as fixed as they can while still waiting on Covid-19 updates and information. 

Of course, with being back in school, people are feeling giddy about being back for in-person learning. Senior student Aaliyah Lobendahn replied, “sure” in response to being asked if they felt excited during the first term of the school year. Radi Stafford, another senior student, replied, “I really did.” Another student, Jacob Serrano, also a senior student replied, “Yes, very much so.” 

When asked if something should have been different during the first term the same students replied in the same order as the previous responses, the aforementioned students replied as follows “it was nice not being online,” “No,” and “It’s nice talking to people again.” When he was asked if the first term went well, Radi Stafford replied, “I just think it’s a lot better than online school,” as it was hard for everyone to do online the last month of school last year, even though it was needed to keep everyone safe from Covid-19. 

In all, everyone is glad to be back even with the situation with the pandemic and setbacks with the quarantining, but so far the school hasn’t needed to shut down due to the staff enforcing the usage of masks, and to stay home if you are sick.