On Monday, March 8th, New Prague High School opened its doors to the complete student body for the first time in nearly an entire year. Group A and Group B students were reunited, and classes doubled in size. This was a major step towards returning to life pre-covid, but life is definitely not back to normal yet.

The decision to return back to full in-person learning was not made lightly. Principal Nicole Adams met with epidemiologists and health officials, and they recommended that NPHS could consider returning to school around February. This information, combined with increased vaccine rollouts for staff, guided the decision to return to full in-person learning.

When Ms. Adams was asked what the most difficult part of the return back to full in-person learning was, she responded, “I think what’s hard is when you hear everyone’s coming back, you think ‘Oh, it’s back to normal,’ but it’s not totally back to normal. Aside from the obvious things like everyone’s wearing a mask, we still have the exclusion guidelines so that if there is a positive exposure in school, anybody who’s in their space within six feet for 15 minutes or more still has to quarantine, and I think that is probably the toughest part. That’s potentially a higher number of students having to quarantine and missing a longer period of time because now we’re having instruction every day instead of every other day or two to three days a week model.”

Not all students have loved the transition back to in-person learning. Sophomores Samantha Solheid, Megan Langeberg, and Payton Peterson preferred the hybrid learning model. Solheid felt, “it’s definitely different having to wake up five days a week versus your two or three. It’s just an adjustment you have to make.” 

Langeberg said, “I like hybrid better because I could sleep in and do all my homework whenever I wanted to throughout the whole day.” 

Peterson reported,”It feels kind of claustrophobic. It’s weird being in class again because there are so many different people.” 

Although hybrid learning has its benefits, NPHS is slowly and steadily working its way back towards “normal” life. Reinstating full in-person learning just brought it one large step closer.