Waterville ninth grader Hanley Poyer tried to talk to her phys ed classmates as they walked 15 feet apart around the school track.
Eighth grader Michael Sturr’s math class has just one other student in the room.
Amy Lakata misses heading to soccer practice after school.
As the 2020-21 school year opened last week under a variety of scenarios students returned to academics under circumstances never experienced. In the Waterville district, all students attend half a day and then use the other half of the day for learning at home.
At the Junior-Senior High School that means following along through livestreaming as their classmates attending the other half of the day are taught in person. For Team Gold, these students wake up, log on and learn, then attend in the building in the afternoon.
Sturr’s math class actually has another dozen students learning from home at the same time. “It’s weird to just have two of us in the class,’’ he said, “but we got to take our masks off because we sat so far apart.’’
Principal Nick Rauch said when students were divided into morning and afternoon groups, siblings were kept together, with the emphasis put on younger ones at Memorial Park. “We have a government class with 19 in person students one section and all virtual learnings the other section,’’ he said.
Kaitlyn St. Peter joined her senior classmates in their ….