COVID-19 has made 2020 a tricky year to navigate, especially going into the 2020-21 school year. However, after the first quarter, students and staff have learned how to work with the devised hybrid model. 

Art classes at Staples created an organized system to provide students with the supplies they need for their classes. Students in both cohorts would receive their supplies before spending their three days home, then return those supplies the following week. 

“When we are in school we obviously use what’s in the class,” Shawn Zhai ’22 said, “but then when we leave, we take what we need. So we can still do the same thing our classmates are doing, just from home.” 

On Nov. 13, the Superintendent Thomas Scarice announced that Staples would go fully remote throughout Thanksgiving break. After the news dropped, teachers had devised a plan to get their students the supplies they need. During the week following this change, the art teachers arranged a pickup spot at the school for their students to pick up their supplies so that class could continue to run smoothly even when fully remote.

“The first day we were fully remote, we didn’t have anything to do so many people thought we just wouldn’t do anything until school resumed to a hybrid schedule,” Ainsley Kugle ’24 said. “But then by Monday the following week, we had all of our supplies and continued class as we did before going fully remote.” 

Similar to art classes, the culinary department has adapted its classes to the hybrid model as well. Students that are remote with the rest of their cohort find recipes to recreate before their in-person classes. Each week, students explore a different cuisine from countries around the world. When in-person, students have the option to cook their recipes while wearing gloves for extra credit. After declaring fully remote learning, students find five recipes instead of three and find more research about the background and origin of their dishes.

“The culinary classes had an organized classwork schedule for the hybrid students which worked really well,” Alexia Abrams-Rivera ’22 said. “When we switched over to fully remote, nothing really changed because we could still continue to do our tasks just at home.” 

Overall, the switch to full remote learning may cause a slight pause at the beginning for some classes. However, students and teachers quickly adapted to the circumstances to keep classes running smoothly. 

“I was nervous at first when the announcement of fully remote learning came out,” Jenna Hartman ’22. “But seeing how quickly and smoothly the classes switched left me satisfied with working from home.”