Life in The Red Cohort
There are four cohorts at Needham High School: blue, gold, green, and red. Blue and gold alternate weeks at school, while the red cohort stays at home with fully remote learning. Students who are in the red cohort made the decision with their families to complete their school year in a fully remote manner.
The students in the remote group have the same schedule as students in school: three or four eighty five-minute classes on most days. On Wednesdays, students have seven, thirty-minute classes. Although online class is scheduled for eighty-five minutes teachers are only required to keep students for forty-five of those minutes, and classes often end early.
Testing in online school is fundamentally based on the honor system, although some teachers may have screen locking software to prevent cheating. However, many don’t, and students must remember that a good grade is only worth something if you’ve earned it.
The main difference between remote and hybrid schooling (besides location) is that remote students have at least one Tecca class. Tecca is an online schooling program that Needham hired to teach classes. Needham High School remote students use Tecca for a variety of subjects. Most use it for electives and/or languages. Tecca has a variety of interesting classes that students can choose from. For example, Tecca offers a 2-D animation and sports management course. Some Tecca classes have live video classes while others don’t, and if a class does have a video class, students are not required to go to it. Online school has some clear differences from in-person school, but overall it is a pretty similar education experience.