Students adjust to distance learning
By Gabriela Gomez ue to the COVID-19 pandemic, classrooms look different this year at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School as teachers teach from their living rooms and students learn from their bedrooms. The 2020-21 school year began completely online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Students have to virtually attend three class periods a day and they alternate daily. This semester, a new class was incorporated into students’ schedule called advisory to provide students with social-emotional support in a smaller and less formal setting. “I feel like advisory is a time for me to interact with students I’ve never met before and have time to wind down just a little bit,” senior Ashley Pedraza said. Mondays are instructional support days that allows students to get extra help from their teachers or gives them time to catch up on work. Mondays end earlier than the rest of the week, at 12:10 p.m. and students don’t meet with their advisory teacher. During distance learning, the school
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day starts at 9 a.m., one hour later than normal and ends earlier, at 2:15 p.m. Students are also given an hour-long lunch break every day, twice as long as when they’re on campus. Other changes this school year includes the loss of a Spanish teacher due to low enrollment. Math teacher Lori Seo is also teaching a new Intro to Data Science class. It is a UCLA math class which focuses on the analysis of data as well as how the data can be used. Although online learning is the safest way for students and teachers to interact without coming into contact, distance learning is still a struggle. “I feel overwhelmed with distance education,” junior Derek Calderon said “I was using a Chrome provided by the school but then it started giving me trouble so I started to use my own laptop.” Students are also struggling with remote learning because they are staring at a screen for a long period of time. “I get distracted so easily and I end up being on my phone a lot more or just not paying attention,” senior Petra Vass said.
In September, 81 DPMHS students responded to an online survey about distance learning.
Evan Gleason and Antonio Bedon contributed to this report.
Advisory kicks off during online learning By Delilah Brumer
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istance learning has affected many aspects of student life, such as the transition to different class schedules. One of the biggest changes has been the district-wide addition of advisory periods. “I think it was a combination of the district and the (Los Angeles Unified School District Teachers) Union wanting the schools to be able to give the students more social-emotional support,” Daniel Pearl Magnet High School Magnet Coordinator Leah Pevar said. Advisory periods are graded on a pass-fail basis and students receive 2.5 units of credit toward graduation if they pass. Students have these 30-minute-long periods every school day except for Mondays. Students either have advi-
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sory period H, which is before lunch, or advisory period L, which is after lunch. “It’s still school but it feels kind of like a place to just be calm and relax a little bit. Like today we were doing origami,” freshman Robert Wolfe said. While some students find advisory helpful, others feel like their time could be better spent working on more academic-focused work. “I just feel like advisory is a little bit of a waste of time because I could be using it to do homework for other classes,” junior Nadia Montiel said. “At the same time, I do like that you get to talk things through and I have improved on things.” Advisory periods allow for students to learn real-world skills, aside from academic subjects. Additionally, advisory class sizes are capped at 20 students per
The Pearl Post | October 2020
teacher, allowing for more communication. “I like how small the (advisory) classes are and how everyone just kind of knows each other,” sophomore Sabrina Robertson said. Instagram: @BrumerDelilah
