Chodae’s Fundamental Damage

“Did you guys learn about the lock and key model last year?” My biology honors teacher asked the class, his eyes scanning the room for an indication of whether the students had the slightest clue of what he was talking about.

I, along with the rest of my classmates, shook my head. I, in fact, had never heard of what he was talking about and neither did my peers by the confused expressions on most of their faces. A few students even let out a laugh, some even smiled, myself included. That wasn’t the first time we were asked a similar question inside the biology classroom and outside of it. It happened in my Italian Honors class numerous times. The occurrence usually followed a generic course of action, beginning with the teacher asking the class if we had learned a specific subject, which was then followed by puzzled faces and “no’s” going around the class.

It seems that after the return to the renewed Cresskill Middle/High school building, students aren’t fully prepared for this school year and the loss of covered material the previous year is affecting the academic performance level of the students negatively. But before we jump right in, let’s observe the timeline of the past years, going back as far as 2 and half years ago when the coronavirus had just hit.

The following table and timeline cover our time in school ever since COVID – 19 had come crashing down vigorously and without warning into our lives:

It is evidently clear, by both the timeline and the table, that us students who have attended CHS/CMS during these years were in a constant state of uncertainty undergoing multiple changes throughout the years.
Chodae’s time schedule caused less material to be absorbed by the students. Chodae for the highschool students began at 9:00 am and for the middle schoolers 30 minutes later, 9:34 am and the school day ended at 2:02 pm for both the high school and middle school students. Each class was a total of 30 minutes long. That is 15 minutes less than the regular 45 minute class periods.
To one 15 minutes might not seem like such a big deal. However, in just one school week, the students were losing 75 minutes per class period. In a school month, the students were losing about 300 minutes per class period. Which resulted in over 4,100 minutes lost during our 4.5 month stay at Chodae including the fact that on Monday’s and Friday’s the students were online and received a full school day.
That time amounts to watching the Avengers: Endgame movie 22 times, the movie itself being 3 hours per watch. And if you are a fast reader you could finish reading the entire Harry Potter book series in under 4,100 minutes. Think about how much valuable information you as a CHS/CMS student missed out on during those 4.5 months in Chodae.
Not to mention, the adjustment of beginning the school day at 7:40 am compared to 9:30 am, almost two hours of a difference, has appeared to be difficult to most individuals who aren’t used to waking up at such early hours.
Ofri Greenberg, a 9th grader at CHS is one of those individuals. “I find it very hard, especially as someone who can’t wake up for their life,” she complains.
Yuval Hanuka, another fellow 9th grader at CHS claims, “it was very difficult. Not specifically the waking up early part, but the length of the school day is something I am still not used to. Especially during the first week of school, I found myself exhausted at the end of every day.”
Apart from the irregular time schedule of Chodae, the classes were less advanced, far below average. This was caused by many factors, including the shortened periods, the open space classrooms which limited privacy and took away the ability for students to focus on class assignments, the very little to no materials at hand for teachers to teach and for students to learn with, and the list continues.
Yuval Hanuka also brings up a good point. “It wasn’t hard to get good grades because a lot of teachers stopped giving tests or quizzes. It was mostly open notes assessments, so as long as I paid attention in class, it was easy to receive a good grade.”
Looking back at my 8th grade year at Chodae, I only had a few tests in my Algebra II and most were take-home. This was mainly caused due to the shortened periods and the inability to take long tests in an appropriate time frame. This led to the high school level course to practically be at a lower level than some middle school classes. While the information we were learning was still at a high level, the restriction and limitations of Chodae led to us, the students, gaining poor habits that would eventually catch up to us if they haven’t already this year.
While some of us CHS students are struggling to adapt, past CMS students are stuck at an unfair disadvantage.
Raima Rawal, a past student of CMS, a 9th grader who currently attends Bergen Tech has to do almost double the work of her peers to play catch up. “With everything that happened last year, and COVID-19 I feel as if my education has been compromised. With the school continuously changing their minds on different locations, from switching back and forth from virtual and in person learning, or being on watch for new funding, there was never full attention on getting the students the right education and enough of it. Though I am aware it is all important, it is also unfair for me to be behind in classes just because I attended a school that was going through a tough time and was at a loss on how to handle it. I shouldn’t have been put through a system to have caused me to feel academically inferior to my peers”.
While going to a more advanced school is still a hard adjustment, Raima shouldn’t have needed to spend her first month of school worrying about her not being at the same level as her classmates.
Entering high school should be a breeze when you’re going to attend the same building, with familiar faces and hallways. However, that doesn’t appear to come so easily when you haven’t attended a full day at your school for over 2 and a half years.
While Chodae was our solution to finding some balance and finally getting rid of virtual learning, did it really solve anything? Was Chodae really beneficial? Or was it the exact opposite?