Now that students in the Wayne Schools district have attended more than two weeks of hybrid, full-day learning, students and teachers are not all that thrilled to go through the rest of the year.

This is planned to stay this way through the end of the school year. Many parents of Wayne were complaining about how students aren’t getting the full effect of schooling with just a half-day.

Although some people got their way, the majority of students, teachers and parents are less than thrilled with the new schedule. The people who are most impacted by this are the teachers and students. Being in school isn’t as much of a hassle as being at home doing virtual classes. Many students said sitting at a computer for a half-day was draining enough, to push the schedule longer to the original full-day schedule is even more draining.

Teachers don’t give the standard amount of homework anymore, since students being us students stare at a computer all day so if they gave homework, students would be on the computer even longer. If homework was given at normal amounts, then teachers would also have to be on their computer longer to grade it. A major issue with going to a full-day schedule is how it made many students have to change their schedules for work. As a result of the pandemic, some parents are out of work, so teenagers have been working more hours to help out the family. With a half-day scheduling ending, the high schools around noon, many students were able to pick up extra shifts at work and get more hours. Now with the full day ending at almost 2:30, teens had to lose hours working just to sit on a computer for 2 more hours.

“The full-day schedule is a terrible idea. At this point everyone is worn out from all we’ve dealt with so to extend the day, at a time of the year when most students are tuning out anyway, makes zero educational sense. 40 minutes on a Google meet was awful. 58 minutes is intolerable and bad for everyone. Unfortunately the people making these decisions aren’t teachers and have no experience with virtual or hybrid learning. So now we have a schedule that doesn’t benefit students or staff and was created solely for the optics and politics of education. That’s poor policy,” said Taylor Berkowitz, World Studies teacher.

As Berkowitz said, “the people who are making these decisions for the community are not anyone who is actually working through the schedules. The BOE is not sitting learning or teaching over a computer daily for them to have a right to say how this will benefit anyone. Virtual learning has not been a benefit to anyone but being the circumstances we need to work with what is given to us.”

To make matters worse is when virtual learning is dragged on into a longer day keeping students learning on a computer. Also, having teachers drain their energy over a computer, to students who are not motivated to learn virtually.

Teachers are more interactive while teaching in school, sitting over a computer, neither students nor teachers have energy or emotion to engage in the lesson and conversation.

“I would be fine with it if everyone was in school, but I feel it’s almost impossible to focus when we have to be staring at a screen for 7 hours. The longer schedule is unnecessary and doesn’t help students during this tough year,” said Senior, Bran Caprioni.