Success. Financial independence. Prosperity. All of those spring from one key foundation: education. The registration process determining what classes North High students will take next year began today and will end on Feb. 5, but planning how one will learn began at the end of January when Parkway North High students chose whether to go back to in-person learning or continue learning virtually next school year. Since each student learns differently, one option may be better than another for individual students.

“I like to work on my own and at my own pace,” said sophomore Lily Lageose. “Sometimes, I’m in the mood where I want to get everything done for the next two weeks, and other times I literally don’t want to do anything in life. So, [e-Learning] gives me the opportunity to balance it out, where I can do all my work one night if I want, or I can space it out through the week and [that gives me] the opportunity for my schedule to be flexible.”

There are various other reasons as to why a student may be well suited for a virtual environment.

“I think what helps a lot of people that have been successful [virtually] so far are those that work hard to have a study schedule. A lot of people are struggling to separate work time and free time when it’s at home because they’re doing all the things at the same time in the same place, so mentally they keep everything locked together. They don’t take enough breaks or they work too hard,” said sophomore counselor Ben Reznikov.

However, not everyone is able to do well in virtual learning because of many things, such as loss of focus or technical difficulties.

“I think I do better in-person because I get distracted easily at home. When I’m in school, I at least make an effort to pay attention to the teacher,” said sophomore Tyrelle Henley.

Students and teachers were forced into an e-Learning environment in March of 2020. At that time, they did not know what to expect or how to learn or teach in that environment. Since then, e-Learning has improved in various areas, such as offering e-Teaching guidance courses to teachers, making devices more accessible for students and adding clear guidelines for the e-learning students.

“A lot of the improvements had to do with how we communicated with families,” said Dr. Jennifer Stanfill, Director of the Parkway Virtual Campus. “Also, just developing more clear guidelines and expectations for teachers in terms of consistency so that families know how to access and have the technology that they needed, and that teachers also had the tools they needed in order to teach in an online environment.”

Since these improvements have been made, many students have found that e-Learning fits better with their circumstances and have preferred e-Learning over in-person.

Even though students have already given their preference for whether or not they want to be a part of the Virtual High School next year, they will have the opportunity to switch from virtual high school to in-person in May if they desire. In the end, it’s up to the students to choose the type of learning that works best for them.