One of Spring Valley’s star football players, Kelze Howard, felt the struggles of the 2020-2021 distance-learning school year, having to pick up the scraps his following Junior year. 

“I was doing pretty good online until the midterm when I kind of got off track,” Howard said. “The lessons [became] harder, and it was hard to get it right when I didn’t have the teacher in front to ask questions.” 

Howard failed his tenth-grade history class, Algebra I and Geoscience course online, affecting his GPA and transcript. 

“My GPA went from a 3.5 to barely a 2.0,” Howard said. “I was really upset, and my [ability] to play football was basically on the line. I had to make up the classes.” 

He was assigned by his counselor to re-do those three classes through APEX Learning and Burke High School nightly school. 

“Many students are trying to make up their grade,” Assistant Principal Benjamin Feinstein said. “Several of the upperclassmen in APEX are there because they did not pass during the shutdown.” 

Howard committing through his summer break and Junior school year, he earned the needed credits and ultimately boosted his GPA to a stable point. 

“I worked hard to get my grades up even though it wasn’t what I would rather be doing during my summer break,” Howard said. “It was kind of stressful, but it was worth it.”

During the time of distance-learning, Howard gained the mentality of “if I struggle, I’ll struggle forever,” ultimately dipping his grades further. 

“I kind of lost motivation when my classes got hard online,” Howard stated. “It became hard to study. When I wouldn’t do good, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it so I gave up at some points.” 

Howard wasn’t the only student who lost motivation throughout the 2020-2021 online school year. Many others found it difficult to learn from the new environment and weren’t as successful as they could have been. 

“There were a large number of reasons students weren’t successful, ranging from apathy to a lack of motivation to not understanding the material but not wanting to ask for help,” Feinstein said. 

However for Howard, gaining those needed credits and now living his senior year gave him the ability to see the advantage of APEX Learning and is now taking extra classes to graduate early. It being one of the positive aftermaths of the distance-learning school year.