By Archanaa Ramakrishnan
As MHS shifted to distance learning during the pandemic, many aspects of school have changed, including clubs and organizations (CLOGs), an important part of the high school experience. The MHS Hip Hop Club, Model UN, and Milpitas Xtreme Robotics are just a few of the organizations that have had to adjust to the pandemic. MHS Hip Hop Club co-President Jenina Fernandez explained the importance of the club, especially during distance learning. “The purpose of my club is to have a dancing culture where we can express ourselves and just dance with one another,” said Fernandez.
“To learn the dance, we have to see each other and watch each other, and it has been really different on Zoom. [We’re not] surrounded by our club members, seeing how everyone is doing, asking questions, so it’s just been a lot more difficult,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez described the process of the MHS Hip Hop Club during distance learning. “We’re very fortunate to have a good cabinet this year. We participated in the school’s CLOG Rush, which was very helpful. … And as for practices, we have been doing virtual Zoom workshops,” Fernandez said.
Clubs this year are hard to host online, and engaging members has become increasingly difficult, which forces officers to find new and innovative ways to engage the members, Fernandez said. “So we recently started up this thing called ‘Dancer of the Month,’ and it is basically where we have our own members nominate someone that they have been seeing at practices or they just see all over the media dancing a lot. So that has helped a lot actually,” Fernandez said.
As the officers are trying different ideas to engage their members, participants can help as well. Fernandez explained how participation over online meetings is simpler to do than in real life. “I feel like on the internet it’s a little easier to talk to people because you don’t have to physically be there and make eye contact. So I think participation [would help],” Fernandez said.
Fernandez explained her plans for when school reopens and physical interactions with safety precautions are allowed. She said that the club will try meeting in real life with safety precautions and implement a hybrid meeting for those who cannot attend.
Aryan Gupta, Model UN Club Treasurer, spoke about how his club has functioned during distance learning. “Our purpose of our club is to go to conferences where we speak about a topic we are assigned to,” said Gupta. “[Distance learning] made things a little more difficult because, for example, when we want to go to conferences, we collect money in person. Since we cannot collect money in person, we have to host specific times when people come to school or PayPal or Venmo. It changed the way we operate,” Gupta said.
Gupta elaborated on the weekly processes of his club during distance learning. “We are doing virtual conferences. … We host weekly Zoom meetings…online. And we used to do mock conferences,” Gupta explained.
He also expressed how he manages to keep members engaged with club meeting activities. “We host raffles. If a member stays in for a certain amount of time, we will put their name in the raffle and buy them boba. It’s to make them engaged and tell their friends to join so they have a chance of winning something,” Gupta said.
When asked how club members could help the club prosper during these difficult times, he said, “Something they can do is turn their camera on. It’s not as fun talking to someone’s name tag, and seeing their face is a little easier.”
Hoping to return to school next semester, clubs like Model UN are starting to roll out new plans, Gupta said. “I think that once we go back to school we can start attending regular conferences in person, maybe stay at some hotels and do more interactive experiences with Model UN. Hopefully the best outcome is we all attend in person; we all attend conferences and go to hotels,” Gupta explained.
Another club finding a way to operate during distance learning is Milpitas Xtreme Robotics. “The main purpose of the robotics club is basically to inspire the next generation of STEM workers, which would include programmers, engineers, and honestly just makers as a whole. We’re here to inspire them, help them along, and give them those opportunities that otherwise they wouldn’t really be able to have,” President Kalino Ruiz said.
“I think that we have gone through a lot of challenges since the start of distance learning because robotics is always hands-on. We have a lot of interaction, and we have a lot of fun when we’re hanging out with each other. It’s definitely hurt the amount of actual fun we could have, and it’s hurt the unity of the club because I personally very much enjoy seeing everyone in real life, and not being able to work on a robot together, not being able to talk in person together, not being able to re-organize our lab or anything like that, it does hurt the club I would say,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz continued to explain the process their club goes through to provide effective material to the club members. “We have individual meetings for each team, which will usually take place on Zoom or Discord. Team leads can organize it for weekends or really whenever else fits the time schedule of the team. We’re trying to make it flexible because a lot of us are just really busy during these trying times,” Ruiz noted.
Because Milpitas Xtreme Robotics has so many members, the club is divided into separate teams, which became challenging during the pandemic. “Once COVID-19 hit, we realized that it would be pretty difficult to try to shift our team meetings from in-person to online, and so we met with all of the team leads and decided the best thing would be to teach everyone more about the basics,” Aishah Jaffery, the secretary of the club said“We decided the best thing would be to teach all the newer members we got this year about the basics of building, design, and programming,” she added.
Edward Mai, co-Vice President of Milpitas Xtreme Robotics, explained what a club’s team went through during the pandemic and the process they had. “The building of robots is still happening, and we are still teaching programming to newer members. The only difference is that FTC (First Tech Challenge) has moved online for the time being or [to] remote events, to ensure the safety of our team members,” Mai explained.