Have you ever woken up one day and your alarm is going off at 5:30 a.m. and you think, “Man, this sucks, I wish I could do school from home”? 

Well, good news for you, Agua Fria adjusted its calendar this semester to include three days where students can work from home. 

These work-from-home days are meant to give students and teachers a chance to catch up, since Covid and Covid exposure has interrupted a lot of learning this year. They are structured in a similar way to when school first went online back in March 2020, as the students learn from their homes. 

The three days are spread out at least by one month, and we’ve already experienced one of them on February 18, which was the Friday that followed Presidents Day, also a day off for AFHS students. 

The days are meant to be used as a catch-up day where students are able to work on things from any class, but they have to sign in from Google attendance found in Google Classroom.  

The campus is still open from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. to only a few groups of students. According to the communication sent from Mr. Molina, the campus is open to students who have IEPs, students who are in the ELL program (students where English isn’t their first language), have 504s (students who have health impairments that could affect their learning), are part of McKinney-Vento (students who are homeless), and belong in group homes.” 

These students are able to work on assignments or study for anything at the campus while the rest of students do it from home. The students from the groups listed above who do go to the campus must sign in upon entering the campus. Breakfast and lunch will also be provided to the students on the campus along with the nurse and clerk. They will have to find a way home themselves, though, as transportation is not operating on this day. 

The teachers throughout the day will be available over email, for any questions or concerns the students may have or want to ask. 

For attendance, the teachers will create either a discussion question or use the Google Form which is more commonly used for attendance. The students will need to answer the form or questions in order to be marked present. If they do not do this they will end up being marked absent. All classes will do this. 

There is no live instruction done by the teachers or anything that is new to the students. There are no mandatory office hours. 

The upcoming work-from-home days are Monday, April 18, which is Easter weekend, and Friday, May 13, and will have the same rules and procedures. 

Ms. Maurtiz, a history teacher at Agua Fria, believes that the work-from-home days was a great effort between the district and the school to compromise with each other to make sure that Covid is not spread more than it already has. 

“The month of January was really tough with student absences and there is sure a point where as a teacher you feel like there are so many kids out that all you are doing is tracking absences rather than teaching, but I definitely do not miss teaching on Zoom so I appreciate the effort,” Ms. Mauritz said. 

She added that “it will benefit some students who take the day to truly catch up on their work, but [she] worries that some would take it as a day off, but maybe that is truly what students need so long as they feel better rested and ready to take on the next school week.” 

Let’s hope that the students and teachers are able to use these days to be able to catch up on work or grade work if they are a teacher, or use the entire day as a day to take a mental break from school in general.