McIntosh is now offering Saturday school to Fayette virtual academy students. These 3 hour classes are occurring on the dates of Nov. 21, Dec. 5, and Dec. 12 before the first semester concludes, as a way for students to prepare for final exams. These Saturday school sessions are referred to as “Operation Homestretch”. The goal of operation homestretch is to assist virtual students with completing significant amounts of their coursework before the end of the semester. These Saturday classes include various classes with an estimated 10-15 other students, social distancing but still makes it so students have peers to accompany each other. Dr. Lane states, “The goal for Operation Homestretch is to allow our virtual students to have access to an MHS teacher to make some positive progress on their virtual coursework before the end of the semester.”

With the difficulties 2020 and coronavirus has brought everyone around the world especially with students it has been significantly harder for students to perform at their full potential, this gives virtual students an opportunity to work independently yet still have assistance in person from a certified teacher. Virtual students around the globe ranging from K-12 through high school and even college lack in person instruction this year, while teachers continue to scramble to get lesson plans together well, adapting to a whole new online platform. A researcher from the website https://www.brookings.edu, was focused on comparing and contrasting student’s abilities development from pre COVID and present COVID. Jim Soland researches that, “…students could begin fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading from the prior year relative to a typical school year. In mathematics, students may show even smaller learning gains from the previous year, returning with less than 50% of the gains. In lower grades, students may be nearly a full year behind in math compared to what we would observe in normal conditions.” This means that students are roughly 50-70% behind from the last grade the student was in. This serves a significant impact because if students around the world are already over half a year behind from their last school year. As they continue to struggle without in-person instruction, who knows truly how much longer we will be online and when and if students will ever get an opportunity to fully get caught up. Jay Collins, a junior attending McIntosh High School all virtually this year claims, “I knew going into this year as a junior was going to be super challenging let alone, but Covid-19 makes it nearly impossible to stay on top of assignments, quizzes, and tests.”

Thankfully this is one of the major reasons ‘operation homestretch’ was organized and created. Allowing virtual students from all schools within the district and of any grade level to reach out for help. Jay has told me she is aware of operation homestretch and says she finds it “…super helpful that I have an opportunity to go in on Saturdays to get prepared for finals” In this time of confusion, McIntosh and other schools are trying their hardest to give students all the materials in order for them to achieve greatness in all of their classes. As we can see there are many benefits to this new intervention for the students as well as the teachers.