On Sunday March 15, 2020, the Wentzville R-IV School District sent out a notice about all Wentzville schools being shut down from Monday March 16 to Friday April 3 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes all school activities (athletic, extracurricular practices and competitions) being cancelled as well.

With schools being shut down, we have temporarily switched to online schooling. Many have heard the news from their parents, friends and social media. Before we left, teachers were already having students preparing for the EOC, but having three weeks of not being able to see your teacher is a problem for everyone.

“I expect that this will not go very well. We are going to get even more behind in our learning than we already are, due to the snow days, so when we get back teachers are going to try to shove information down our throats so that we can be ready for AP tests and EOC and the like,” Natalie Ginger (‘20) said.

Out of 124 students responding to a survey, 112 of them said students will not do their required school work, while 12 said that students will do their work. Is having online school affecting students upcoming grades? The majority of students are worried about doing online schooling because if you have any questions for your teachers, you will not get an answer as quickly as if they were there.

“I expect for teachers to understand this will be a challenge for all and that it’s going to be hard to start out with being able to ask multiple questions and not get a response and it may be harder for students to understand things like usually,” Camryn Bogart (‘23) said.

With 114 students responding to a survey, 50% of students are not comfortable with doing online school.

“Absolutely not. I love doing REAL school work AT SCHOOL. I feel like online school work is just a better way for students to keep from doing their actual work. It makes it much easier for people to cheat and if something goes wrong with the internet at any point in time, the students are screwed. There are students who live in places where they don’t have wifi or have very weak wifi and won’t be able to get their work done. I understand that people don’t want to get sick, but they don’t do this kind of thing for the flu. Why should they do it for Covid-19?” Bria Jefferson (‘22) said.

Having to switch to online schooling is a big step for all grade levels. However, there are consequences for students who do not do their work over the long three weeks. Hopefully everything goes back to normal very soon.