EYE 2 EYE: Students discuss Hybrid vs Distance Learning

Hayden Brown and Jay Dugar|November 20, 2020

Hayden Brown: Hi guys, welcome to this week’s Eye 2 Eye podcast. I’m here with Jay, and today we’re going to be talking about the coronavirus situation with school so we’re going to be talking about hybrid learning and distance learning, and the pros and cons and the benefits and the disadvantages to each one of those individually and we have a couple of students here that are representing the different points of view. Ethan, which point of view, are you representing today.

Ethan Grinberg: I am pro hybrid learning.

HB: Alright, Kristen What are you representing.

Kristen Chen: I’m pro distance learning,

HB: Perfect. So we’re gonna come up with a reasonable argument for each one of these, but first I just want to hear your guys’ thoughts individually. Let’s start with Ethan, what do you think about distance and hybrid learning. So, personally,

EG: I think that the social aspect is the most important part of it. I don’t live in Oak Park so I don’t see my friends that often, and it’s hard for me to go out to seek to see anyone to say hi to anyone. So for me, it’s not about the learning itself, it’s about seeing people feeling normal and trying to go back to what it was kind of go back to what it was before March, and just see how much we can get back to normalcy or whatever semblance of it we still can achieve.

HB: Gotcha. All right, Kristin, so you believe the opposite of Ethan Grinberg’s points. What do you think about the situation? what’s holding you back from wanting to go back in person?

KC: Oh well I guess I’ll start off with, it’s just I think right now, it’s a little too dangerous to go back to school because if you haven’t heard we just entered the purple tear again for COVID, which ratio is like the like the highest reward coming from, like, for most cases in our county, like, per day or something like that. And I just think like you know going back to school, it’s not going to help because there’s still exposure and like you know the best way to prevent the spread of covid is just zero exposure at all. And you know the staff and stuff they’re gonna have to like, probably, you know, all the students around and take their temperatures and stuff and overall just like that much exposure in my opinion is just not safe. And also, like, if you take into account, like, other things like you guys are going to be, like, using like making taking. What’s the word producing a lot of waste because you know people are gonna keep using hand sanitizer. Teachers are gonna sanitize every classroom and like all the seasons of wipes or like the sanitizing sprays and like you know just, I just like you know I don’t trust like every person to not make a mistake like there’s always gonna be one person who, you know, didn’t wash their hands thoroughly enough for something. We had sports, come back and person like I believe, last September and I heard that there were already people who got infected with that. And I think like the school they said that if they discover that a kid’s affected they’re going to have like the kid suicide and then send them home. But like, you know that’s not ideal because every single person who was near that kid is now at risk. And so it’s the person who, you know, took the temperature of that student. And like the nurse or whatever. Yeah,

HB: There’s definitely going to be risks and benefits with all of those because there is some social interaction that we need to keep alive during this time, but we also need to reduce it as much as possible.

Jay Dugar: If I could jump in really quick, um, Ethan I’d love to hear about, so as Kristin said we have recently moved into the purple tier, I was just wondering if that impacted your decision or do you still think it’s worth the risk.

EG: So, personally, I mean, not to be political or anything, but as the younger generation we are ourselves, less at risk of seriously getting ill and I understand that everyone has their parents, their grandparents contact I understand that. So I think that for those of us who want to go back and who do go back I think it’s important for us to make more choices throughout our day. So for example, I’m not going to be seeing my grandparents if I go back to school because I think it’s not fair for me to see them if I’m seeing everyone else at school. But I think that the purple tier, in and of itself, it’s like not to shut everything down again and I’ll go back to school again, just because it goes up by like a little bit and then down by a little bit. It’s like, I think personally not. It’s kind of arbitrary in my opinion. Their thresholds that they’ve established. I think that if I think that the whole state should do one thing, and be consistent. Because if a different county, does something else entirely that’s bordering county, like LA County or Ventura County. I think that, seeing different schools do different things. It’s really hard and unfair for other schools to not follow suit. So, being purple in my head is just a color. And I think that I’d be a lot happier. Going back I think a lot of people that I’ve talked to would be happier going back but like I said, if we do go back. It’s important for us to make those decisions and to not see people who are at risk.

HB: If we were to go back, we definitely don’t want to see anybody at harm when we go back into this stage because we’re everybody’s trying to be as careful as possible about going back to school. There’s a lot of hesitation about how we’re going to handle it to the teachers because they’re the most at risk. So there are a lot of interesting angles to take this from, and I think both you guys brought up a lot of really good points. Dos location has to do with anything that resembles your choice. Is there anything that has is location altering, how you feel about distance learning.

EG: So, like I said I don’t live in Oak Park, I live in Woodland Hills about 25 minutes away from my nearest friend. And that’s been hard on me because a lot of them can’t drive. So, it’s a lot of planning a lot of, oh are you free this day are you free this day and honestly violets no Park, I probably would say no, let’s stay home Let’s be distance learning whatever, but just the, the fact that I have to make all those arrangements, just to see someone. I think that that’s taking a toll on everything and waking up doing the same thing every single day in my room with all my classes at one desk with one computer, not moving, not seeing someone in the hallways. I guess you call them that. And so, yeah so distance for me, my distance from the school makes me want to go back to the school.

HB: And for you, Kristin when you’re talking about staying at home. Are you okay with the rest of this senior year playing out as the rent as the beginning of senior year has started out for you?

KC: Um, yeah, pretty much. I mean I live in Oak Park, but I don’t really socialize that much so, that’s not really a big factor for me, but I do want to say that like, in my opinion, I just think that going to school, like you know, during the times for socializing, like I just totally to the point of it because even if you are going to in-person school you’re, you have to like keep six feet away from like everybody and stuff and I imagine that’s kind of hard to like do when you’re trying to socialize and it’s just much easier to you know just call someone for my opinion instead if that makes sense.

HB: If we can always do what we’re doing right now which is just call and be able to socialize with one another so that’s a really great point that you brought out. Jay, are there any final comments that you want to bring up to the argument.

JD: Yeah, actually one. I would just love to expand on that. Kristen, you mentioned that I think a lot of Ethan’s argument is that socializing is really important. And you mentioned that for you personally, it’s not as big of a factor, but do you think it’s important, like, to acknowledge student mental health, and that student mental health might actually be better if we transitioned to hybrid, like what are your thoughts on that.

KC: I mean, like mental health is definitely important. So like I just don’t, I don’t think that, you know, simply just switching like the learning model is really going to solve any mental health problems that like a person might have like you can’t simply rely on that, to, you know, improve your mental health like if you do have mental health issues, you should get help from you know like a certified professional, that’s all i think you know,

HB: I think that’s actually a really great point because even though we are going to be back in person and we’re going to be able to see our friends, there are still going to be restrictions on how we’re going to be able to hang out with them, or socialize with them there’s still the six feet problem that we have. And then there’s the positioning that we have to have with the lunch tables going to one person per side. I think tables of six are supposed to be reduced down to tables of three. So it’s very difficult to have an entire friend group to join each other for lunch. So there’s still a lot of angles where it’s still very, very difficult to have that full social interaction despite actually seeing each other in person. Ethan, are there any final comments you’d like to make.

EG: Just on that note, like sitting apart at lunch and everything like that. Um, well I think it’s complicated, obviously because who’s going to choose which three friends sit at the table or whatever. But at the same time, you will be at the table with your friends. Maybe it’s not all your friends, but like we said earlier, we could FaceTime or other friends, put them on the table. Have them watch us eat what we watch them eat. And then, but you have your other two friends at that table and it’s some semblance of normal. Now we all understand that we’re not going to go back to a full senior year with all of our rallies and water assassins and all that fun stuff that we want it to have. But if we could at least have lunch. Simple, simple lunch, that’s already a huge improvement in my opinion.

HB: Yeah, and I think that baseline really does bring a great sense of normalcy. All right. That was a fantastic discussion. We got Ethan Grinberg here, Kristin Chen, and Jay Dugar as your host alongside me Hayden Brown. It was such a great show we are so thankful to have you guys. Um, it was really wonderful if you guys want to join us for another show just let us know. It was fantastic having you guys on.