The privilege of easy communication in our modern day world is one of the greatest blessings of our time. The multitude of apps, widgets, and features at our disposal make business, leisure, and school more simple. That is, when it works properly.

So far, this school year has provided the student body with insufficient Wi-Fi connection in most classes. Wi-Fi issues were never out of the norm for Regina, but it’s a daily occurrence now. In an instant, Safari pages will pause, Notability will shut down, and Google Classroom will buffer. As students attempt to get back into the swing of things, the lackluster connection only makes circumstances more frustrating. It makes following along with notes unorganized. It creates an inability to retain information in the given moment. Teachers end up having to wait half of the class for a Google Doc to load. It not only affects the students capacity to learn, but the teacher’s efforts to educate.

A teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained that the faculty have access to a ticket system that allows them to submit connectivity issues, where they can hopefully be resolved by IT management. But despite its intended job, teachers are having trouble submitting issues to the program because of the weak connection, making the whole situation ironic. My teacher, along with many others, were frustrated at this development, as the program designed to help had failed at the hands of what it sought to fix. Appropriately, my teacher emailed one of the men in charge of the program, only to receive a lackluster response in return. They emailed her stating what the problem was, but not explaining how to fix it. Since then, a handful of faculty members have decided not to log anything in at all and just deal with the poor Wi-Fi and projector issues.

After discussing this problem with my teacher, I took it to Dr.Porreca to be further examined. During a cordial meeting, I discussed with her the extent of the issues and what it meant for many of the classrooms afflicted. I explained to her the situation and how extensive it has been for the past several weeks. Dr.Porreca took what I said to heart and explained, “We’ve been aware that there were problems, but not how many. It’s an ongoing project to figure out what’s going wrong and what’s going to make it better.” It was refreshing to hear that the Leadership Team has acknowledged what the students and teachers are going through and that they are actively trying to find a solution.

Hopefully, in the next coming weeks, we will see an improvement in the connection, and school could resume without any further nuisances. Until then, Dr.Porreca urges us to continue to let them know if the problems persist. She concluded our meeting by saying, “If the ticket system doesn’t work, one way or another, teachers and students should let me and Mr.Donnelly know about any other problems.”

Despite the connection issues, though, students and teachers have been working their hardest to power through the school days. I know that even if we continue to face these problems, we will still function as efficiently as we have been since August.