Hybrid Learning
Hybrid learning at Sierra Canyon
Georgia Kreischer ‘22
Arts and Entertainment and Opinions Editor
The mischievous Ms. Rona seems to have died down enough for some schools to begin to open their doors for their students. Most preschools and kindergartens have been open since the beginning of the year with enough precaution that they have remained up and running. Sierra Canyon joined these schools, recently opening their elementary, middle, and high school. The administration at Sierra Canyon could not be reached for a comment, so to find out what the plan was for their high school, I interviewed a student attending the school and discussed their experience with the hybrid learning model.
Max Fromkin ‘22 attended the in-person learning starting March 2. He brought up Sierra Canyon’s original plan and how that eventually changed. At first, students would be divided up by their English class. Those who came to school would be separated into even smaller groups with a 15 student maximum. Kids would attend each of their classes on their computer, sitting apart throughout a classroom. Students would not physically be seeing their teacher, but instead join the same class they would at home now at school.
The schedule still runs the same, including a break and lunch, but during class, each student would attend their zooms at a desk and chair with all windows and doors opened. The concern for student safety lingered, considering the little amount of air circulation between the 15 students.
Above: Lily Fromkin '24 attending her history class from school
Asking Fromkin how that had changed, he replied with “No one liked that so they made a sign-up sheet for each grade and said ‘All right, you and your friends talk it out, what room do you want?’”
The rooms then changed to picking a group of friends and placing them all in a classroom. All would still attend their zoom classes and remain socially distanced, but it gives students a sense of social normality. A teacher is supposed to check in on students every hour to make sure they stay distant, safe, and present in class.
While the classroom aspect is more separate, breaks and lunches remain almost unchanged. Students can wander wherever they want in the school for lunch, taking the packaged lunches prepared by the cafeteria. Max remarked that the lunches were way less regulated than he predicted them to be. He voiced that their supervision had somewhat loosened up during their breaks between periods, which made him a bit nervous. Attending Sierra Canyon’s hybrid learning is of course, optional, but you get the opportunity to opt-out only once. If a student chooses to attend hybrid learning, they do not get the opportunity to change whenever they want.
Sierra Canyon’s middle and elementary schools are up and running as well. Their kindergarten through second-grade classes have been active since the beginning of January 2021 and so far no COVID-19 cases have been reported. More schools other than Sierra Canyon are starting to open up. While not all methods of teaching their students in the physical classroom are identical, the differences in safety could serve as a learning experiment. What safety measures does a school have to enforce to keep students and their families safe? As Louisville experiments with this idea, there is much changing in regards to how education will continue in the near future.