Virtual learning has been a new experience for all of us. Waking up a minute before class starts in the morning is a new reality for lots of students – not that we’re complaining! It has come with its challenges, like having wifi issues and it has also come with lots of fun memories that we won’t soon forget.

As we were all at home during school, many different disruptions occurred that would not happen in the actual building. I know multiple times my mom would stick her head in the door and I would have to shoo her away subtly while I was in class on camera. Sometimes it was kids interrupting parents.

When at home on Wednesdays, history teacher Mrs. Catlyn DiPasquale always has a fun time handling her kids.

“My kids always ask for waffles the second I log on to 3rd period class. I know all my students can hear them and I usually lose my train of thought. It goes from “Mommy, waffles?” to “MOMMY, waffles please?” to “WAFFLES MOMMY, please?” to “MOMMY WAFFLES PAHHLEASEEE!” Mrs. DiPasquale said.

While teachers’ kids have made appearances in class, so have people’s pets. Whether it be by whining for food or crying for attention, they like to make themselves known. English teacher Mrs. Anne Loudon, knows this well.

“When I am at home on Wednesdays, before 6th period, my cat, Penelope, always wants a special treat and she will cry for it,” Mrs. Loudon said.

Just like Mrs. Loudon, other teachers have had fun experiences with their pets. Ms. Val Scott has often been sitting in the middle of class during virtual learning when her dog would leap onto her lap to get some attention and stick her face all up in the camera. The students loved it though.

“They would often request ‘puppy time’ once a week at least. They would get their dogs to get on camera and we would still continue the lesson, but our dogs would have their faces on screen instead of ours! It was fun!” Ms. Scott said.

These fun memories definitely made virtual learning easier to handle and even continued into hybrid learning, where some students were online and some were actually in the classroom. This made for some interesting times as the students in the classroom could not always see what was going on in the Google Meet.

Some of Social Studies teacher Mr. William Mitchell’s favorite moments were meeting students’ pets. His favorite one was meeting Catherine Colarusso’s dog, Phoebe, when he began to bark at the screen to see her reaction. Phoebe raised her ears and began looking all around confused, but that was not even the best part.

“The students that were in the classroom were watching their teacher sit there and bark at the computer screen. I believe it was right there and then when my students believed I had finally lost my mind,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The hybrid learning environment proved to be challenging this year, especially on some teachers’ mental state. Yet, this brought many fun memories to look back on in a time that was hard for everyone to get through.

What especially made it hard on teachers was the challenge of making sure students were logged on to Google Meet and paying attention.

Mr. Eric Schott, a high school English teacher, said that he received a couple of emails from students who said they were either at the beach and the house they had rented has terrible WiFi or they were traveling and probably wouldn’t be able to connect to a Meet.

Mr. Schott definitely has a favorite memory.

“I have a kid that I know usually just logged in, didn’t turn his camera on and went to play video games. One day I called on him in during a discussion and got nothing, as usual, but the funny part was I saw one of his friends who was on camera pick up his phone and send a quick text. About 30 seconds later the kid turned on his mic and said, ‘Mr. Schott, did you call on me? I think I heard my name, but my audio is really bad today,’” Mr. Schott said.

All in all, virtual and hybrid learning has been pretty challenging, but we can take time to appreciate all of the hilarious and maybe not so hilarious moments that we have from it.