You wake up and you see it’s the day you must take the ACT. So, you roll out of bed, get dressed and get in the car to go to school. You pull up in the car line to see other online kids getting back in their vehicles and driving away.

You start to walk toward the building, but you get stopped by your principal and she breaks the news to you: No one is testing today, and you need to see if you can get a ride back home. As an online kid I have been put in many situations exactly like this one.

Online students often don’t know what’s going on at school. We depend on the teachers, staff and the principal to tell us important things, including when we will be testing and the ways we can apply to get back to brick and mortar schooling.

There have been many times where I have gone to the Lakewood website or the dashboard on Canvas to find answers to a problem or for an important date or schedule but have not found what I was looking for. Face-to-face students get to go to school and hear the announcements.

They don’t have to rely on parents or a website to tell them what’s going on. My mom works four days a week, and three of those shifts are nights. She doesn’t have time to tell me about every phone or email she gets from the school.

Online kids shouldn’t have to search for answers to important questions. Lakewood High School needs to have a set place where kids can go and find all the important and up-to-date information about things that are going on at the school – whether that be the school website, Canvas or our school email since we’re using it so much

. I have missed information that can affect my education now and in the future. I think we all need to realize that talking and keeping in touch with each other is important when going to school during a pandemic. Communication is the only way we’re going to get through this mess together. Communication is the key.