Seventh grader talks virtual learning, quarantine

Andy Mattson Jefferson Seventh Grader

CONCEPTION JCT., Mo. — If given the choice, like most junior high students, Jefferson C-123 seventh grader Andy Mattson would really rather spend his days outside instead of at school.

But after spending time in quarantine, if he has to go to school — and he does — he’d prefer to do it in person.

“Well, learning’s a little bit tougher because (teachers are) not like, face to face with you to be able to help you with like, your problems, or just having a general question about something,” Mattson said. “… Whenever I’m not in quarantine, it’s more efficient, to me, to learn, and I get to interact with other people than just staying at home by myself and being in my own room by myself for the whole day, and then coming out to like, my family, and we can just see each other then.

“But in the classroom, it’s just a lot easier, because all the tools are there, and you can ask your friends for help, and it’s just … more efficient to me to be able to learn at school than it is at home.”

Although, he admitted, this whole online classes thing does have its perks.

“It’s kind of nice being home, and you wake up and you’re there in the classroom,” he said. “… Because it’s tougher to learn from home, but then it’s nice in some instances. Like most of my main classes are in the morning, and then I just have like, PE and stuff like that in the afternoon.

“So then, once lunchtime comes around, I’m done with classes and I can do whatever for the rest of the day. … Then I can just go outside or do something, like with my dad, out on the farm.”

Even at school, though, the most difficult part has been adjusting to new social norms.

“Probably some of the biggest challenges would be, like, knowing that you can be with your friends, but you have to stay apart from them,” Mattson said. “It’s just not normal, like you’d normally be. … Like, on a normal type of day, you could just go up to them and be by them and talk with them. But now you have to be six foot apart, you have to have your mask on, and … then like knowing that a sport gets canceled and then you just, you dread going to school because you know that you don’t, like, you don’t get to go to practice after school, or you don’t have a game, because it got canceled.

“It’s just, not the funnest to go to school then.”

Editor’s Note

This feature was published in The Maryville Forum as a two-part series on Thursday, Dec. 3 and Thursday, Dec. 10. Articles may have been edited for space within the print edition, but will be available at full length at The Forum’s online focus on COVID-19 in the Community.

To give readers an idea of student knowledge and concerns regarding the pandemic, one student’s story will be posted each weekday at 6 p.m. through the end of 2020.