As Zoey Hogeland (10) sits down to do her schoolwork in the morning, she becomes even more frustrated and overwhelmed with her long to-do list of assignments from her teachers. 

“Without being able to actually stand in front of students to thoroughly teach material, it doesn’t make sense that [teachers] should assign assignments containing new material that’s hard to understand,” she said.

While everything is changing around students like Hogeland, they have also had to come to terms with a new way of learning that they have never seen before. Instead of being taught in a classroom by their teachers in person, they begin each weekday morning by signing in virtually in order to record their attendance and see their assignments as online documents and prerecorded lessons posted as videos. Because students are used to going to school each day and being able to simply raise their hand and ask questions, a world in which that is not possible has been difficult, leaving some feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work they are getting from teachers.

Sarah Paylor (12), who plans to attend the University of Florida in the fall, is dealing with the changes that come with distance learning. 

“I’ve noticed that certain classes are giving more work,” she said. “It is definitely hard to get acclimated to in the beginning, especially because it takes a while to get used to uploading our work online. I feel like being online makes it easier to assign more work.”

While Paylor said some teachers are giving more work than they ever did before, she admires those that are being more lenient. 

“I really do appreciate the teachers that have asked us if their workload is too much,” she said. “It truly means a lot.”

While the workload for Paylor may not be exhausting, that is not the case for some younger students. 

Hogeland said teachers are asking for too much in the amount of work that they are assigning. 

“There is no need to assign so many different complicated assignments,” she said. “I believe that assignments should be simple and straightforward and should ensure that students are where they need to be [academically] but shouldn’t overly stress them out.”

Hogeland is not just concerned with the amount of work teachers are assigning but also the amount of stress students are under. 

“Distance learning is already something that foreign to most students and a challenge to get used to,” she said. “I don’t think that overloading students with work should be teachers’ number one priority.”