Columbia Heights High School has recently introduced hybrid learning, and with that comes a new and confusing schedule. At the start of hybrid learning, students chose to come back to attend school in-person two days a week with half of the students coming in Mondays and Tuesdays while the other half came in on Wednesdays and Thursdays. This left Friday as an all-online school day, also known as an “asynchronous” day, leaving students with an 8-period class day. This day has been used as a check-in day for most classes, but many students are left questioning the point of having Zoom or attendance when there’s not much to do, and therefore, not much to learn. 

This day of short 30-minute classes or meaningless attendance Google Forms has resulted in students wishing for the day off. The day is basically just a day for work time, although some teachers make you stay for a lecture on zoom while others assign no work and just post an attendance form, which can lead students to being confused about the classes they need to log in for. 

Now, the district has expanded high school in-person learning to all hybrid students attending school four days a week, which still leaves Fridays with everyone at home. Some students think Fridays should be off so they have an extra day to catch up on school work.

Haley Vogel, a junior at CHHS, created a petition to have Fridays be asynchronous workdays. 

“I created the petition because the students of Columbia Heights would like to have consistent, asynchronous days on Fridays,” Vogel (11) said. “The current schedule only causes mass confusion within the student body. Some teachers have Zoom classes [while] others don’t, so that can be very confusing because it’s not always the same each week.”

 It could also be a day for teachers to plan lessons, grade or meet with each other since the new hybrid learning model has been a challenge for them too, coming with a lot more work, coordinating with colleagues and dividing their attention between students online and those attending in-person. Teachers would still be able to check in with students by email and through Google Classroom updates and by hosting office hours before and after school during the week.

Having one day off during the week is not uncommon with the new hybrid system throughout the state of Minnesota, including the district just to the north of Columbia Heights. According to the TwinCities Pioneer Press, “Anoka-Hennepin, Osseo and others have decided to combine that 2 ½ hours of teacher planning time into a single day, keeping students at home, doing schoolwork on their own time, on Fridays while teachers take that time to prepare. St. Cloud made the same decision after initially announcing it would have secondary students in school every day.”

Other school districts participating in a four-day school week schedule should show that during these confusing times, it’s pretty understandable to have a day off. Having one day off during the school week has shown to ease the stress experienced by both students and teachers. 

“Having a [set-in-stone] thing of making Fridays asynchronous will help students know what they need to do the day of,” Vogel said. “It could even help teachers, giving them a day to prep. I created the petition for people to sign to show the leaders of our school it’s a change people really want. We are only teenagers, but it’s something we can do to show our voice and what we need to change.” 

Teachers and students have been undergoing a lot of fast changes with the recent hybrid learning system. With motivation at an all-time low, students and teachers deserve some slack. If other districts have a day for self-driven learning catch-up, why isn’t CHHS giving that same empathy to our school?