With only a couple months into the COVID-19 school year, things are obviously different from if everyone were to be in class. Roswell is using “TEAMS” calls to communicate with students from home while being online for this year. Students still do the same work as if they were in person but without being in a classroom. This means that this year can give some difficulty to the teaching aspect. With everyone being at home and using TEAMS, it gives you the option to turn your camera on and everyone in the class will be able to see you at home or wherever you are. However, with this option in TEAMS, should students be required to turn their cameras on? 

Most teachers don’t care if you have your camera off, if you participate in class. However, some teachers require cameras to be on and will use this as an attendance tool to make sure everyone is in class. Teachers also like cameras to be on because it makes things a little bit more normal.  

Sophomore Will Harrison says “Personally I hate turning on my camera. I don’t really know why, I honestly feel like I am able to learn more by having it off cause I don’t feel like everyone is looking at me.” I agree with Will’s statement because I feel the same way in terms of what I can do when my camera is on. I feel more relaxed and I can purely focus on what is happening in the class. I think the problem with me is that I am worried about what people are seeing on my screen. Even though most people probably do not care about what I’m doing and are just listening to the teacher, it still makes me feel better if my camera is off.  

I feel like most people do not like turning their cameras on because in some of my classes when the teacher asks for us to turn our cameras on, many don’t or will refuse to turn their cameras on. I think this has to do with them not being very comfortable with turning their cameras on. This is reasonable considering we started a whole new school year online. However, Roswell has started allowing student to go to school on their assigned day by last name. This means that there will be a few kids in class, but there will still be people on the TEAMS call at home. I also think another reason people don’t want to turn their camera on is because they don’t really know their teacher. They spent the first couple months talking with them through a screen, and you can’t really get to know your teacher when you’re not in person.