In March of 2020 COVID-19 hit our school. It’s impact, which we only expected to last for a few weeks, has turned into a global pandemic with 274 thousand deaths and counting, and that’s just in the USA. The school had to adapt and overcome many trials and tribulations along the way. Many teachers feel that they could use a bit more help from the school and some think that they are doing all they can.

Mrs. Muncie said, “I feel like our school administration’s hands are tied, there is only so much they can do.”

Last year, the district decided to use Google Classroom as the online learning platform to finish out the school year virtually. Since many students were familiar with this platform, it came as a shock when they found out that they would be switching to Schoology. There was a rush to learn everything about it.

“I’m not going to say that we learned Schoology,” Mrs. Muncie said, “[but], we completed the training in Schoology.”

With the switch to Schoology looming in early September it sent many people into a panic since nobody was familiar with the platform. For the first couple of weeks, there was nothing but complaints on how the site was organized and the many difficulties that it presented.

“I always get the grey screen that says that I am unable to connect to Schoology,” Cassidy Fottrell, 11, said.

Not only are the students not confident in the site, many teachers feel as though Schoology was not the best choice for this year’s academic progress.

“It makes me feel that I’m not confident to teach,” Mrs. Muncie said, “and so then students don’t have this confidence that their teacher knows what she’s doing, and I’ve been teaching for 13 years.”

Many people still are not happy with how it is run. The site has not been available many times since we’ve started school and students aren’t the only ones experiencing problems. Teachers are not the only ones struggling with these issues. Many students have had problems as well.

“It goes down all the time,” Fottrell said, “and sometimes the links are weird and won’t work”

Another issue with Schoology is that grades are supposed to be synced into synergy and Schoology so teachers could input them into one place and the grades would update automatically. But this is not the case, this system has not been super convenient to anybody. In fact, it has made it harder.

“The administration was not getting information out to students,” Mrs. Muncie said. “They were telling us [the teachers] it was our duty to get information out to students, but we had very limited information.”