The wait is finally over. After more than a year, Garfield’s educators and students have returned to the building for in-person learning. Students have been split into three “cohorts” – identified as A, B, and C. Cohort A comes to school on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, cohort B on Thursdays and Friday afternoons, while students who opted out of returning make up cohort C and participate fully online. 

This new arrangement has been met with mixed feelings. 

Sophomore Taylor Gale, who is in cohort B, felt very positive about the new schedule. “I just really wanted to meet my teachers and see everybody. I was sick of being in the house all the time, and it makes me so much happier… it’s so much more productive for my learning.”

For many students, April 19th was the first time seeing friends in months, and for others, over a year. However, social life wasn’t the only reason Gale was ready to go back to school. She was struggling to keep herself motivated to do schoolwork without a teacher watching over her. 

“During the asynchronous time, I knew nobody was watching me so I didn’t feel like I had to do it,”  Gale said. 

She wasn’t the only one struggling with self-motivation during remote learning. “I chose to come back because I wasn’t making progress in any of my classes, and was slipping back, so I needed motivation,” James Wittkop, a junior in cohort A said. 

However, Wittkopp hasn’t had the same experience as Gale. “The new schedule has flipped my day on its head. Something I initially overlooked was an increase in workload from all my teachers,”  he said.

Is it really worth all that pressure just to have more motivation to work? Maybe the real winners were the ones who stayed behind. After all, sitting in your house by yourself is a lot easier than making the commute all the way to Garfield, right? 

Aaron Orbeck disagrees. A junior in cohort C, Orbeck is not happy with the new schedule either. 

“It has reduced a lot of the time I have for homework because the teachers expect me to be listening to lectures in the afternoon when I would usually be doing homework,” Orbeck said. Despite being at home, Cohort C is still required to log onto class during what was previously asynchronous time.

The mixed responses given by students show that there is still a long way to go on the road to normalcy. However, a full return might not be as far away as it seems. The hope amongst students is that we will have a full return next year, but only time will tell.