The school before and after Corona

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an infectious disease. Most people who are infected with this virus will suffer from respiratory illnesses. Older people with medical problems like cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases or cancer are more likely to fall ill with the virus than healthy people. It is thought that the disease originated in Wuhan, which is located in China, at a seafood market. Coronaviruses are known to “jump” from animals to humans, so it’s believed that the first people infected with the disease were at a seafood market. Many countries have closed their borders since then, and some regions have been completely isolated. In Europe, the first country to be massively infected with Covid19 was Italy, and in Austria the first case was registered in Tyrol, before it spread throughout the country. Now, the USA have the most infections worldwide. However, it is hard to estimate how many people have already died around the world because of Covid 19.

During the “corona-break” we had to modify a lot of different habits in order to adapt to the new situation. It was especially hard to accept the fact that we wouldn’t be able to see our friends for a long time. However, one of the few things that we liked about the new situation was that we were able to create our own study plans and decide for ourselves when we wanted to do which homework. It was not always easy to get organized at home, but somehow we’ve learned how to be more and more effective and, in our humble opinion, we are sure other students can validate that, too. Of course the teachers have helped us a lot. With their help we have learned to use online platforms like: Moodle, Teams or Google Classroom. And even though there were deadlines to submit the homework, we could still decide when we wanted to do the assignments and in which order. Nonetheless, a few people might still be confused by the differences between distance learning and home schooling, so we will explain it: “distance learning” is when you work at home and you communicate with the teachers of your school via online platforms, like the ones we mentioned above, while with “home schooling” your parents or private tutors are responsible for your education, and it usually takes place at home.

We are really glad that we are back at school again because we can see our friends, at least for a couple of days. But of course there are also a few things that we miss when thinking of the ‘good old days’ before the corona crisis, when we were all together at school. We have to admit that we didn’t like wearing facial masks or keeping the safety distance with our friends. Everyone had his own table, so we had plenty of space and, of course, the risk of getting infected was minimized. But it was a very strange situation and a weird feeling. Now things are better, but we still miss our friends from the other group. And it is sooo quiet!

All in all, we are glad to be at school again, even though things are different now. However, we also think that those security measures were necessary to keep the virus away. Nevertheless, we hope that the situation will change to normality again in September – and that we can meet all our friends and teachers again. Because now we have realized how lucky we´ve always been to have the privilege of going to our amazing school!

Theresa Wimmer und Helena Tatschl (4B)