At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic during the summer of 2020, Wake County Public School System ordered that the 2020-2021 school year would begin entirely remote, and most students remained remote for the entire year. Later, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to subside in the summer of 2021, students and parents were given the opportunity to decide between returning to in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year, or opt to remain in Wake County’s Virtual Academy program for the subsequent year. Finally, at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, parents and students – regardless of their plan for the 2021-2022 school year – planned their return to school for the first semester in two years, as the Virtual Academy program came to an end. The first semester of this year is now coming to a close, and PCNN interviewers sat down with some long-term Virtual Academy students to discuss their return to school, and how it feels to be back on campus, or on campus for the first time in their high school career.

“I thought it was pretty helpful… I mean, I had more time to study and do my work, and I could focus on other things like extracurriculars,” junior Poorvaja Chandramouli said of her Virtual Academy experience. 

Arya Shrestha shared the same viewpoint – “[In] virtual school, the environment was more relaxed… We could wake up 5 minutes right before class started, so we could stay up all night, then sleep in through the classes. You made friend groups really easily – just by chatting through the chat,” Arya said. However, Arya would not go back if she had the choice. She believes bringing back Virtual Academy takes away children’s opportunities for a typical high school experience. “Most kids would say yes to it but don’t realize the actual reality of virtual school.. how much of a downside it can be.” “For kids like me who are very extroverted, we need that face-to-face interaction… Overall I think it’s good for all of us to come back in person.”

Poorvaja says that the workload and general school experience in Virtual Academy and in-person classes are roughly the same – but communicating via email with teachers and not being able to connect with them was unfortunate. “Definitely it was a little bit slower, because you had to email for everything, and you couldn’t really talk to them in person… But overall the environment was pretty good.” 

While Poorvaja has missed the freedom of more time to study and focus on extracurriculars, there have been highlights to being back. “I’ve gotten to meet my friends in person now, and I feel like I can actually have a connection with the teachers so that I can learn better and access more resources.” 

Fellow junior Milania Spain shared a different perspective about Virtual Academy – “My classes were really unorganized… I ended up failing my French class because there wasn’t enough communication going on between me and the teacher… We weren’t really getting the same experience.” Milania says her online experience was terrible, and adds that “you’re isolated, so you’re not even getting to see your friends or anything.” Milania recalls that the lack of connection and access to teachers forced her to look to other resources like Khan Academy and Youtube to learn the content of her classes. “Because usually everyone was emailing the teacher trying to get help, and they could never answer my email.” 

“You don’t get the same kind of connection you’d get – with being here at Panther Creek with the teachers physically.”

But being back has helped – getting involved in activities like Colorguard and other extracurriculars has helped Milania get back on track and adjust to returning to school every day. “Now that I’m able to engage in the school and make new friends and stuff I think it’s better.” Senior Sarayu Khajjayam also found that being able to come to school for track and cross country made things much easier. “I still got the interactivity that I would have at school, from cross-country and having extracurriculars.”

Sarayu, coming back from two years of Virtual Academy, recalls that last year was “a little bit worse,” than the previous year because of fewer resources for online students. “For a few of my classes, I didn’t necessarily have teachers actually teaching me. Some of the teachers were from different schools, and for my statistics class – which was an AP class – I had a completely asynchronous class with just one teacher who’d grade the papers.” The lack of resources and help from teachers as well as the absence of peers to lean on made it more difficult, but Sarayu says she enjoyed having “a lot more freedom to do work, more time, and flexibility.” 

Based on these interviews, it’s clear that the transition back to in-person education has been interesting, and rocky for some, but there are definitely benefits to being back. The Panther Creek community is glad to see their Virtual Academy peers back on campus, and PCNN wishes these Virtual Academy veterans a great second semester back!