The COVID-19 pandemic has shook our world in ways that no one could have expected, as our entire society seems to have come to almost a complete stop, it seems like accommodations have become our new normal. With every store and restaurant either closing or putting a strict limit on the number of customers allowed in it seems like everyone has been forced to accept the ways in which our society must change in order to save as many lives as possible.
The changes that we see are impacting everyone in ways that we could not have foreseen and there is no doubt that the world we are living in is taking an emotional toll on everyone involved. Schools closing and moving to online school has been one accommodation that has been extremely impactful and although schools are doing everything in their power to make sure students are still able to learn and develop in the same ways that they had when they were in the classroom it is still extremely difficult to fully adjust the curriculum to fit in an online course.
While we adjust to this new situation we must adjust to what defines our new normal, as earning grades has been the usual routine in the majority of SPA classes the current scenario does not imply the usual routine and therefore should not imply the usual grading scale. While online schools have existed, been successful, and used the letter grade grading system, SPA is not one of those schools. We did not sign up for an online school and did not anticipate the situation that we are now in, so expecting students to adapt to this completely new way of learning in the middle of the school year–with the same stress of earning high letter grades–seems outrageous.

Students have definitely put in all the time necessary at home to earn the grades that they would hope for while in normal school and have found ways to adjust in order to not see their grades suffer, but there is no reason to add extra stress by imposing the possibility of going down one letter grade if students are going to be putting in the time anyways.
SPA has used a pass/fail grading system in many classes (before this unprecedented scenario overcame the entire world), and as they continue to use this form of grading each year, it clearly is still giving incentive to students to give their best effort but it is also allowing the student to learn without the stress of a letter grade. It is hard to accommodate to every single students’ needs and it is especially difficult when we are not attending classes as usual, so in order to allow for the highest level of learning, it would be in everyone’s best interest to lessen the amount of stress on students in this extremely stressful time and change to a Pass/Fail grading system.