Can the school take advantage of the new ways JM students discover and learn?

by Rocco Martinez

Because Covid interrupted school numerous times over the past couple of years, there were many things students learned on their own that were new, or some renewed old practices. Because of all the time spent being being quarantined in their homes, students picked up things on their own. 

Brianna Valcarcel picked up drawing again. She likes online because, “I can go at my own pace, and I can learn from my mistakes.”

Ethan Carboni had similar feelings as he described the time he spent learning how to build computers on his own. “I felt like I had a lot more freedom, and it was something that I actually wanted to learn. So I was really invested in it. It wasn't like something that I was forced or that was forced upon me to learn.”

Not only did students learn about new hobbies or skills, but also social issues. 

One example is Nyalok Akec learning piano on her own, which gave her a sense of empowerment. “It made me feel superior in a way because I'm a singer so being able to sing and play the piano at the same time gives me a different mindset of the talents that I have,” Nya said.

Now as she returns to in-person learning, Corinne Higgins says that schools should be more forgiving of students and their mistakes. “I understand that punishment needs to happen, but it could be given as an opportunity to learn rather than a penalty.”

John Monette spent some of his down time learning how to paint miniatures. He learned some of his skills from YouTubers who formed learning communities. And John thinks that Judge teachers could do similar things in their classes. “ave students figure out how to do things and do it the way they want,” John said. “Then the teacher would just review their work and make sure they're doing it well.”

“I just really feel like if the students want to learn, they're gonna learn better,” Ethan said. He brings up this point of having students learning about things they are passionate about, and not just teaching the core curriculum. Because students talked about how much they can learn through social media a lot of students say that classes could incorporate current events that students are seeing on social media.

Liliana Lopez talked about how students were really engaged in a class discussion that involved Astroworld and the suicide of 10-year-old Izzy Tichenor, stories that people were already talking about because they’d seen it on social media.

“Learning about this on my own felt different from learning in school,” Lilyana Lopez said, “because I initially found it through an Instagram infographic that a lot of my friends were posting. So it was different to see everybody on the same stance. It's definitely more biased to see things posted through social media versus at school, where teachers try to keep like a neutral opinion.”

Looking at this situation of learning through social media, there can be pros and cons. Some of these pros are that content creators are teaching us things we should be following, and using their platforms for good. “There are actually a lot of social media creators that teach about these things and connect you to organizations you can donate to or businesses you can now support that are with these minorities,'' Rocco Martinez said.

“It’s really helpful when that creator on social media builds a community around them, of other supportive and like-minded people,” John said.

While there are pros, there are also cons that can cause a lot of harm, like not giving you all the information, sort of restricting the naive.

“A lot of my peers share the same opinions. And the algorithms of social media always feed the same types of things that I want to hear. So it doesn't give me as many diverse opinions,” Lilyana said.