Haywood Christian Academy Blog
Parents, students, and teachers alike have been looking forward to the holiday season this year. For people in Haywood County, and throughout Western North Carolina, it has been a difficult and challenging year. From the sudden ending of the school year in spring to navigating remote learning to working from home and ever-changing schedules, parents are looking forward to a break and a chance to recharge. Students have had all of the typical challenges of academic education, while also navigating life during a pandemic. While our school has been blessed to be able to open for in-person learning throughout the fall semester, we still recognize that there have been additional and unexpected stress and anxiety for our students.
While this has been a dark time for many, the story of Advent demonstrates that the light is the brightest when things seem darkest. As we enter the Advent season, parents have an opportunity to remind their children and students of the story of Christ and the Gospel.
It is hard to believe we are finally nearing the holiday season. This has been a difficult and challenging year for students, parents, and educators in Haywood County. We have faced challenges we never anticipated and are still trying to figure out how to make school, working remotely, family time, church, and every function of society work safely.
Whether they are in private or public institutions, teachers and administrators are working hard to ensure the best and safest possible environments for their schools. Nevertheless, it has been challenging to get students into a routine. And now, especially for public school students, just as soon as routines have been established they are going to be tested with the holidays.
It has been a strange start, to say the least, for many students returning to school in Haywood County. Even those who have returned to campus have experienced unusual circumstances like athletes who are competing without fans in the stands and socially distanced lunchrooms. While this has certainly been a very unusual junior year for your teenager that does not change the fact that they are entering one of the busiest and most important periods of high school. Juniors are scrambling to complete rigorous academic work, take SATs, fill out college applications, and participate in all the extra-curricular activities they can.
To say this has been an unusual end of summer and start to the school year is undoubtedly an understatement. Parents have been confronted with a continuous barrage of challenges, facing them head-on. Throughout Haywood County, homes have become offices and classrooms, as well as places of worship, while many jobs, schools and churches moved to a primarily digital platform. Despite the difficult circumstances, parents and students have risen to the occasion and continue to excel.
We could not be more excited about being able to offer in-person instruction this fall. From an article in The Mountaineer:
"Head of School Kelli Herbert said because of the school's small and intimate class sizes — and because of the 400-seat capacity auditorium, it will be much easier for HCA to meet current restrictions for reopening than perhaps other schools."
This has been one of the most challenging school years most parents can remember. There is not a time in recent history students have simply been unable to return to campus for almost a semester. Parents have scrambled to work out the kinks of remote learning while also dealing with their own work-from-home situations. Haywood County bandwidth has been stretched to the limit in many homes as everyone seemed to shift their education and employment to digital spaces. We have all become proficient with video conferencing in the last few months; however, many parents are ready to put that behind them.