School has been online for two months now and it appears to be staying like this for a little while longer.

With Zoom calls seeming to last longer and longer and the lack of a true senior year shadowing over the class of 2021, it looks like a good time to return to campus. Certain schools have started to reopen their doors, using masks and social distancing classes to follow guidelines. If Bellarmine were to follow suit and return to on-campus learning, how would that look?

The first and only real presented option so far has been a hybrid schedule: half the school comes in twice a week and the second half comes in the other two days. Each set of students would be on campus for an A day and B day while off campus for another. When on campus, masks would most likely be required and students would be sitting six feet apart to optimize social distancing.

Even with this new look around campus, “it would be great to not be purely online anymore and give the seniors a real high school goodbye,” senior Cooper Clarke said.

When not on campus, the work would probably be asynchronous. Since it may be difficult for teachers to teach a class when half are in the room and half are on a zoom, on-campus days could be for the true learning while off-campus ones are meant to complete assignments and maybe watch some videos. Senior Kevin Coleman said, “It’d almost feel like having just two days of school a week.”

This hybrid schedule is the only possible schedule that has been proposed with faculty not wanting all students on campus yet but still trying to get some of that classic learning back. If this schedule is accepted and goes into affect, say in November, it would seemingly last at least through winter break and into 2021–releasing us from this painful 2020.

As a student this schedule would be interesting to say the least. Being on campus but with only half the population would feel wrong at first. At the same time, if days off of campus were to be asynchronous, and if there was no work to do that day, it would be a wonderful break.

Some adults are ready for their children to return as well.  One anonymous parent stated, “No student should be off campus for this long; they need to have a real and fun school year.”

The potential for a new schedule format including on-campus learning will be something to look for in the coming weeks as other schools continue to make the transition as well. The switch will be one that everyone has been waiting for, but if it doesn’t come soon, when will it?