Everyone’s heads in the clouds during the new school year. 

A new option of learning because of the pandemic has been introduced for students to enroll in. 

Coming back into in-person school, students also had an option to choose Cloud Academy and online way of learning. With the new way of learning that people aren’t used to, teachers are also having obstacles they have to go through. Students are also going through this change with the new Cloud Academy.

Cloud Academy is a new online learning program that was introduced this year because of the pandemic. It was a way for students to still be able to do school with their teachers and other classmates but at home and on their own. Students that attend the Cloud Academy are able to do their school work on their Chromebook and attend their teacher’s Zoom meetings from home. 

This year has been a different experience for everyone, including all of the ups and downs that have happened so far. “The hardest part for me is trying to make connections and still make learning fun, especially for my Cloud students. It’s not easy making a real connection with students virtually, and our teaching strategies are a little limited both for Cloud students and in-person students,” Teacher Nathan Lentz said about the program. This year, teachers have been changing some of the things they do in their classroom because of the circumstances with Cloud. Even though there have been some difficulties, everyone is just figuring out the new changes this year together. 

The students that are a part of Cloud are just as new as the teachers this year. About 300 students are currently enrolled into Cloud Academy for this year and it’s a big change for them. “I’m a little worried about starting to struggle in my classes with the split of in-person classes and the split of in-person and online students but otherwise it’s been okay so far,” sophomore Kiara Warren, a student enrolled in Cloud, said. For the students, Cloud is similar to Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI) which means logging onto Zoom when their teacher assigns one to tune into the class lesson and then completing the work on Google Classroom. Cloud Academy is something very different for everyone this year but so far, everything has been working out and going along like how it’s supposed to.