Ole Lammers / Staff reporter
Following the implementation of COVID-19 regulations featuring the quarter system, specific high content, academic courses have seen more drastic changes than others. Teachers and students have had to make significant adjustments in areas like homework, unit length and course content priority to maintain a meaningful experience compared to a normal year.
With a full quarter having passed already, procedures around the new regulations are starting to settle into place, with most teachers having developed a plan to provide a meaningful course to students attending this year. For example, for a course like Math that relies heavily on having time to uphold a common level of understanding for the whole class, so that the skills learned could be carried on and utilized in another unit, this new quarter system can be incredibly disruptive.
To adjust, most academic courses are making harsh changes to their curriculum. These changes mostly consist of cutting certain units that are not necessary for graduation or a future course and skipping potentially unnecessary content in certain units. When asked about how they are working with these new regulations, Kennedy Colleen, long time Math teacher, said “you can’t make a direct comparison between what we are doing this school year and what we do normally,” but “all teachers are working really hard to give you the best academic ‘experience’ under these new conditions.”
Kennedy also expressed concerns about there not being “enough time for students to truly understand the concepts being taught,” which in a course like Math could affect the rest of the students’ academic journey.
Throughout best efforts to maintain a viable school experience, it is impossible to know how the curriculum cuts will affect student performance in the long run until the coming years pass with schools having returned to a normal, post-pandemic, schedule.
BC COVID-19 Safe Schools