Covid-19 has taken a toll on students around the world by drastically altering the learning environment. 

In a normal school year, without a global pandemic, Hershey High School students attended seven, 52 minute class periods per day, five days a week. Due to Covid, now students attend school in person only twice a week with four 88 minute class periods both days. This increase of the time in each class is making it very difficult for students to pay attention for the duration of the class.

Saga Briggs, an editor of InformED, said some psychologists believe the typical high school students attention span is about 10-15 minutes long. Since the classes at Hershey High School are 88 minutes long, we are currently attending classes that are six times longer than the average student can pay attention. This makes absorbing and retaining information very difficult.

Students only get to see each of their teachers face to face once a week. While the duration of the class is long, the week break in between attending the classes makes it more likely that students will forget what they have learned. This could result in students falling behind, or not understanding the information they are being taught.  “I get so anxious about falling behind and I always worry about how I can stay on task with my work,  but I feel like there’s nothing I can do about it when I only have my classes once a week.”- Julia Rossi, Hershey Freshman.  

Cutting the class periods in half or even to how they were in the 2019-2020 school year would be much more ideal for students, not only because it would be easier to stay focused for less time, but also because more classes throughout the day can be added. Having each class at least twice a week in person could improve students’ understanding of the subject matter. “I tend to doze off in classes when they are 88 minutes, because we are sitting for way too long and I can’t get myself to stay focused, and the teachers are putting way too much work on us during that time.”- Savy Snyder, Hershey Sophomore. 

Shortening class periods, and having each class more than once a week would be much more beneficial to students. Contact superintendent Joe McFarland, [email protected] to share your opinion.