With students stuck at home and all IB exams canceled, most students have lost motivation for school. To keep a sense of normal, we need to have more teacher conferences and more class discussions to continue learning. Staring at a white screen doing busy work all day does us no good – interaction and real conversations help us learn.

After one week of doing distance learning, I have had zero teacher conferences and no sort of classroom interaction. Additionally, due to Governor Northam’s order, most of my assignments were not mandatory. Especially as a senior, I found it difficult to see the purpose of completing work without exams or graded assignments. 

“I think class conferences are more effective than other types of assignments because we get to interact with the teachers but there isn’t too much pressure on students,” senior Tahaseen Shaik said.

The process of having to complete those assignments was also not that effective as I was learning material by myself and had no sort of interaction with my class.

With the coronavirus pandemic ongoing, the ability for students to see their friends has been completely banished. Therefore, more class conferences would allow students to still have face-to-face interaction and allow teachers to help their students succeed by encouraging them to spend more time reviewing the material and putting the ideas they have learned into practice.

Additionally, face-to-face learning helps students organize their studies because they need to be somewhere at a specific time and date. Without class conferences, assignments are unstructured and seem more optional – the expectations are lower, so many students tend to brush them off. 

“The workload should definitely start lighter and there should be a spot where all teachers assign work because some of the work isn’t found in the updates so it’s stressful having to hunt for work,” senior Julia Rosenberger said.

If more teacher conferences were held, it would be easier to understand what work we need to complete and we would have more motivation to learn. With conferences, we are able to keep up at least a part of our normal routine in these stressful times.