In March of last year, the MHS campus closed—leaving students to continue their classes online through online calls. However, around April of this year, the Milpitas Unified School District decided to start In-Person-Learning (IPL), encouraging freshmen and students with three or more Fs to participate.
When asked in a Zoom interview why she decided to take In-Person-Learning, freshman Tanisha Varma said in an Instagram interview, “I took IPL because I felt that I needed to push myself to go out of my comfort zone and establish a sense of discipline. As many others felt, I was very comfortable at home taking classes behind a screen, but I realized that though this form of learning may be here a while, it is temporary.” She added that a large part of going to IPL was her parents and the desire to be prepared to go back to school in-person next year.
Varma added, “I did not really know what to expect. A lot of my teachers told me that they weren’t sure how things were going to work as well, and a lot of them were not even coming due to health or other conditions. However, the main thing that I expected was that I would be able to make new friends and socialize more. Additionally, with IPL, I expected that there would be more interaction between teachers and students as well, and that it would be more of a learning experience instead of the teacher just speaking to students with their cameras off.”
However, Varma added that IPL did not meet her expectations, “In terms of socializing and making friends, not many students were in my classes, and none of my friends were even coming. With IPL, I feel it can only be enjoyable if you have people going through this changed experience with you… I understand that teachers are also struggling through these challenging times, and that it is difficult to teach two different groups of students, but because of this barrier, IPL is not what I expected it to be. However, I can say that walking to classes and just being on campus was a nice experience.”
Varma said, “Going to IPL initially felt very strange and abnormal … Evidently, IPL is very different from online learning because online learning is, well, online. But in terms of actually attending classes, not much is different because we are still on the Zoom call in person, the only difference is the setting and who you are around.”
Overall, Varma said that she thinks the school did a good job of accommodating in-person students. She added, “With everything going on, I think the whole process was very organized and that things ran pretty smoothly. They eased students in and made sure everyone was where they needed to be. In terms of technicality, for freshmen, a lot of us are not accustomed with the campus, but the whole system was executed very well, as there were staff everywhere to guide students on where to go.”
Chloe Yeap, a junior taking advanced classes in IPL, stated, “I took IPL because I felt that being in person would make it easier for teachers to teach, and also because I wanted to get back to some kind of normalcy. I help teach a Chinese class every Friday evening, so I definitely understand how awkward it is when you’re asking a question to a screen full of profile pictures. I figured going back to IPL would be a nice thing to do for our teachers. Kind of silly, but yeah. We’ve all been stuck at home for the past fifteen months, and it’s been kind of rough for my family… To avoid all the noise, I’ve taken a few of my classes inside my dad’s car, so distance learning has definitely been an interesting experience for me. We’re all going back to IPL in the fall anyway; I figured I might as well start now.”
One thing that surprised Yeap was the lack of people that actually showed up. “I really thought more people would come back to school, but I was wrong about that,” Yeap said. In her view, IPL was not that large of a shift from distance learning. “My being in the classroom doesn’t really change anything. I’m still logging on to Zoom and watching my teachers lecture through a laptop,” she said.
Overall, the school did an okay job with accommodating students and advanced students alike in the IPL program, Yeap said. “There’s not a lot of us to accommodate to begin with; I’m the only student in IPL for most of my classes, and I’d imagine that this is the same for a lot of other classes,” she added.