INDEPENDENCE, Va. – Students are back in the hallways and classrooms in Grayson County after a school year filled with delays and closings.
“We’re just glad to get back on a routine,” said Derrick Murphy, a math teacher at Grayson County High School.
Since last semester, each week, Grayson County schools were either closed for a day or two or delayed due to weather.
“It does make it a little tougher when you miss that many days,” Murphy said.
Now, school has been back in session and unaffected for more than a week, and both teachers and students are working hard, pushing forward toward the end of the year.
“The kids are pretty resilient. They come back in, and I think they are glad to be back and socialize and see their friends,” Murphy said. “Ultimately, we still have to get all the curriculum covered.”
Murphy noted that this year has been harder for everyone in the schools.
“When you’ve been out for extended periods of time, it’s hard to get into a rhythm with the kids,” he said. “It’s almost like you have to start over kind of repeatedly. That’s kind of a tough part of it.”
Two seniors in Grayson County, Rush Handy and Mac Goad, said while they are ready to be done with high school, they were not planning to miss this many days their senior year.
“It was long, but it was okay. It was good to be back,” Goad said.
“You forget who’s who in a way. You come back, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m friends with him!’” Handy added.
Despite missing a lot of school, they said the teachers helped with the workload.
“Whenever we are out of school for snow or something, a lot of the time our power will be out, especially on the western end of the county,” Handy said. “So, our teachers understand that, and they’ll be really lenient with us. When we come back to school, we have plenty of time to do our makeup work.”
They all hope there is no more weather that impacts their area for this school year so they can continue to have a bit of normalcy.