If you were to walk by North Lab during certain parts of your days at Hewitt, you would see juniors and seniors intently staring at their laptops with their headphones on. From time to time, students will stand up to ask Mrs. Morton or Mr. Loop questions. But Mr. Loop and Ms. Morton aren’t the only teachers present in the room. If you happened to look closer, you will see that on the face of another teacher on the screen of every student. This is Hewitt’s Physics online course.
Previously, many Hewitt students have taken online courses outside of Hewitt. This encouraged Ms. Morton, the head of the science department, to implement online courses for students to take and earn credits for. The introduction of online classes and the need for a physic teacher led to the partnership between Hewitt and the Hybrid Learning Consortium. Through this partnership, Ms. Morton hopes to promote “resilience, independence, problem-solving, and initiative in higher-level science courses as part of a college-preparatory program.”
Ms. Morton’s hopes were already able to reach some of the students at Hewitt. Cara S. ‘18 says that “Online courses require students to be more independent in regards to their work. This is a skill that will be extremely helpful, especially in colleges, so we need the exposure.”
However, some students aren’t as happy with Hewitt’s online physics course. Molly G. ‘18 says, “It can be difficult interacting with the teacher online sometimes because of bad internet connection which disrupts the class as well as the lack of presence of a teacher figure”. There were a lot of complaints from both students and parents about the online physics .
Apart from Physics, there are other students enrolled in online language courses (including Spanish and Mandarin). In addition, several students are also enrolled in Essentials of Engineering, another online science course. It is uncertain as to whether online courses will still be present next year, as it is too early in the year to predict.