School’s out for summer unless you’re in summer school
HEHS students attend summer school to get ahead on graduation requirements, get back to in-school learning.
Samuel Ham, Evelyn Simon, Eric Pelinski, Rahil Patel, Maia Roufis, Gabija Fedaravicius spend time chatting during a break, happy to be able to connect in person.
June 22, 2021
Summer is usually the best time for vacations, road trips, and sports. But for some, it’s the best time to learn. Many HEHS students have opted to take classes, which is helping them to meet some graduation requirements and become reacclimated to in-person learning.
Natalia Shields is currently taking Junior Project Excel, a course that prepares students for the SAT and ACT. “With this course happening over the summer, it makes you realize that time will go by quickly and you have to be ready for it,” she said.
“It’s an enjoyable experience with the right people,” Shields continued. “I have gotten lucky to be in the program that I am [in], where I get to spend time with great teachers and my friends as well.”
Additionally, she mentioned a few ways summer school was different from the past school year. “Last year, summer school felt nonacademic because we were at home,” Shields said. “We couldn’t see our teachers, and course work was limited. Now that we are in person, we are slowly being reintroduced to what normalcy was before COVID-19.”
Sophomore Himani Patel believes summer school is manageable and that being in person helps with the learning process. She is taking U.S. History to cross it off her list of graduation requirements. “It’s harder to achieve the same academic success when you’re at home compared to when you’re at school,” Patel said.
Julia Alch, sophomore, also saw summer school as an opportunity to tackle those graduation requirements. “I’m taking Consumer’s Ed. I needed to do it for graduation,” she said. “It’s not complicated and it’s simple and easy to do. You just show up.”
While getting some requirements out of the way is helpful, five hours of learning can be tiresome, said Alch. For those committed to sports in addition to academics, there can be even more to balance.
Shields, who also takes part in swim camp which starts at 5:30 a.m., said “she was lucky enough to be able to partake in this activity [and summer school], but I know many other of my teammates who couldn’t do it because of transportation or wouldn’t do it because of the crazy start times.”