Did you enjoy sitting home and doing virtual learning? Well, schools in Michigan and Utah are closing the doors on Fridays and opening up virtual learning to all students. Friday is a day that most students look forward to in school. It is a time where they can enjoy school knowing they have two days off when the school day is over. Also, it is better because we get to plan what we want to do for the weekend. Sitting in front of a laptop for eight hours is not fun at all. No one should want to go back to doing that, especially on a Friday when they could be socializing with their friends in school. What is so fun about sitting at home and going to school on the computer? Sure it was nice for the one year we had it, but after a while it got old and boring. No one wanted to do it anymore at all. 

Was virtual learning ever really fun? Maybe for the first few months students enjoyed virtual learning because it was the first time any child ever actually got to sit in front of a computer in their bed, and do whatever they wanted while their teacher was teaching from zoom. After a while, virtual learning got boring and many were glad that the schools were finally re-opening. This meant that students could go back into school and socialize with their friends. Better yet, they actually learned something new while being face to face with a teacher rather than sitting in front of a computer. Children learn better when they are in school and not sitting in front of a screen. While sitting in front of a screen, students are easily distracted by other things going on around them instead of focusing and paying attention to what their teacher is talking about over the computer. It was also so easy just to leave class, and the teacher wouldn’t know that someone was gone. Over zoom, it was just as simple as clicking a button to turn off your camera and microphone, and leaving the virtual classroom. This is also not beneficial for the teachers. Teachers cannot teach the same way they normally would if they were in classrooms. Every teacher has their own unique way of educating their students and being on the computer while teaching does not allow these teachers to utilize all of their teaching skills. This does not allow the students to gain the information they need for the upcoming tests, or the knowledge in the next grade level. The information that is taught now is important because it builds on what every child learns in their following years of education. 

Could virtual learning be beneficial in some ways? It definitely could be very helpful. The COVID-19 virus that first caused all schools to shut down in 2020 is still around. The virus has mutated and now there are different variants of COVID-19. So now, maybe shutting down schools every Friday doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It is only one day a week, and it reduces the chance that a student or teacher gets sick from this horrible virus. When too many students and teachers get sick, it could potentially cause the school to shut down for a week or two, and that is even worse than having just a single day of virtual learning. Fridays are also a day where teachers normally do not give much work to do and are not as hard on their students during the forty-two minutes that they have them. Knowing that, Fridays might not be the worst day to do the virtual learning days. Students and teachers also have families. It couldn’t hurt to change one out of five days of school to a virtual day just to help prevent the spread of this awful virus. Anything that needs to be done to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, should in fact be put into place this way the world can go back to normal instead of forever living on with this terrible sickness. 

Finally, which would be the better option? There are so many good reasons to not shut down the schools as it benefits the students' education and allows the teachers to teach a whole lot better than they would online. It would also help children in the future because they are understanding more and gaining more information day in and day out. The bad part is then more and more of a chance of getting sick with the coronavirus. Schools could switch to virtual learning on Fridays. The pros are that there is less of a risk of contracting COVID-19. Families are safer and the overall spread of the virus reduces. The bad part about that is that children do not learn as much online and are never focused on their computers. As a result, there are two options as to what schools could do to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, but also keep their students’ education in good hands.