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  • Writer's pictureFiona Obando

Is school going back to normal?

Updated: Nov 7, 2021

The pandemic has been a really tough time for many individuals. Everyone’s daily routine was disrupted so abruptly that no one had a chance to adapt to new day-to-day activities. People could no longer go to school, masks were now obligatory, and traveling was limited for everyone; regulations were imposed by the governments in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. All around the world, people needed to create a new routine in their lives in order to regain that sense of normalcy that was lost so rapidly.


Now, almost a year and a half after the pandemic started, things are finally starting to go back to what we knew as “normal” and the American School of Tegucigalpa is trying its best to change as well.


School Hours

Hybrid students will now be able to attend school for the entire day without having to return home. Instead of school ending at 3:30, we now leave school at 2:30, which is an hour less of school from how it normally was before the pandemic. Classes now last 1 hour and 10 minutes instead of their usual 1 hour and 30 minutes. There is only one class, either before or after lunch, that lasts 1 hour and 40 minutes; this happens because lunch is divided into different grades, 11th/12th and 9th/10th, in order to avoid closeness between students. Students will be obliged to bring their own food, since the cafeteria will not open. Also, they are advised to bring food that doesn’t need to be heated because there are limited amounts of microwaves available. Lunch only lasts for 30 minutes, and grades alternate each day for the location they need to go to in order to eat.


Sports

Athlete students are finally being allowed to attend sports on-campus, if allowed by parents. The available sports are: basketball, soccer, volleyball, track and field and for all athletes it is required they attend the sessions of physical training. One of the requirements for this activity is that students must have the two vaccine shots. The students are divided into different categories based on their skill and the modality of school they follow. Usually, hybrid athletes attend sports right after school and virtual students go at 4:30 PM after hybrid students have left the campus. On Wednesday’s, only hybrid athletes attend sports and virtual athletes have a free day.


TES

TES students are finally being allowed to go to Cerro Juana Laínez and do labor work instead of doing their community service through Zoom. Students need to be at school at 7:45 AM since the bus usually leaves at 8:00 AM, and they usually return to school at around 11:30 AM. One Saturday the hybrid students attend and the next Saturday the virtual students go to work. Usually the type of work the students need to do depends on how the weather has been throughout the week, but some general ideas are: cutting grass, taking care of the garden nursery, cleaning the hill, etc. One of the goals of this year’s community service is to improve the quality of the hill since few people are in charge of taking care of it and we want to take away from their burden. There are also those students who are having TES virtually, and they are being assigned activities that will help them equal the hours since they aren’t doing manual labor.


There are many suggestions people have for this new normality, but it has worked efficiently overall. We just need to wait and see whether new complications will arise over these new changes, or if people are comfortable with them becoming their new “normal”.



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