COVID-19 threw a lot of people and plans completely off course and created many adversities. How students should attend school to learn while COVID-19 was at its peak was a huge issue that needed to be solved. The solution was online school, and while that was a big change for many students across the country, it was necessary to keep students of America safe while still educating them. For Wake County, virtual learning came along with asynchronous days which are days where students did not have to attend their classes, but they still had to do assigned work from their teachers. At first, these days would occur weekly but soon switched to only every other week. A big question parents, teachers, and students were asking was are asynchronous days actually helpful?
“Yes and no. It depends on the student honestly, some students did their work on asynchronous days and some didn’t,” said Lauren Latta, science teacher at Athens Drive.
Latta has been teaching at Athens for two years. If given the choice to bring asynchronous days back, Latta said she would. However, she would choose to have them once every two or three weeks.
“It [asynchronous days] was a nice break during virtual learning for me to get caught up on things,” said Latta.
Latta tries to finish all of her work at school so she doesn’t have to take home a large workload. Even with Latta’s attempted efforts to tend to her work only during her work hours at school, Latta spends several hours a week doing her work at home.
“Newer teachers who probably already have a lot more work, they probably spend a lot more time outside of school,” said Latta.
Students around Athens Drive have various opinions about asynchronous days.
“They relieved some stress to know I had the whole day to work, but by the end of the day, not doing any work stressed me out more,” said Charlotte Holcombe, sophomore.
Holcombe has had trouble with managing her time in the past and found that asynchronous days only made it more difficult to get her work done in a timely manner. When asked if she would choose to bring asynchronous days back, Holcombe declared that she would not.
“Students are either lacking in sleep or lacking in time to do assignments,” said Mia Bayola, sophomore.
Elementary, middle and high school students all reported that they got more sleep and felt less tired when they had a four day week, compared to their counterparts in a five day school week according to Education Week.
“They relieved my stress a lot. Asynchronous days gave me time to get work done without having to think about showing up to class,” said Jaylen Baldwin, sophomore.
Asynchronous days produced various different opinions among teachers and students. At the time of online learning during the 2020-2021 school year, asynchronous days may have been more useful, but now that students are back to in person classes for the 2021-2022 school year, people are questioning whether asynchronous days would be useful or not.
