School can be stressful. This past pandemic has only exemplified that. To help students, FCPS has made many temporary changes to help kids out. Stuff like finals not being able to hurt a grade, late work penalties being less harsh, and removing synchronous work on Mondays. It's this last point that is the focus of this petition.

From my experience and the experiences of my colleagues, not having to deal with Mondays was amazing and helped reduce stress significantly. At least for me, it gave me this "Crash, Recuperate, Energize" mentality to my weekends where Saturdays would be for me just to rest, Sundays would be a sort of work day with free time to pursue hobbies, and Mondays would be the day where I finish my work and get energized for the school week. I could even meet with teachers if I was struggling. Over the course of the year, I never really felt that the first day of school in the week was a huge chore, at least not more than the other days. I always felt as if I had enough time to prepare for what school threw at me, at least more than a normal school year. 

As of writing this, I am a freshman at TJHSST, a notoriously difficult and stressful school. You hear many stories of kids getting no sleep because they spend literally ever hour of every day studying. There are huge amounts of burnout and poor mental health due to the pressure and culture to do excellent. A five day work week doesn't really help this mentality, and will create even more whiplash for students who got used to and thrived without Mondays. With asynchronous Mondays, it has allowed me to make sure my mental health is in check and to study smarter, not harder, since I had more time at my disposal. Asynchronous Mondays, as I alluded to earlier, also helped me ease into the full throttle school week with a small amount of work and teacher support. It helped me feel anticipation, rather than dread, towards the work that lied ahead. 

Now the big problem with keeping asynchronous Mondays is the fear that it would hinder performance in school. While I personally believe it would help grades, it's an understandable concern. However, once SOL scores and final grades are in and able to be processed, if we see that scores are on par with previous years, what would the harm be? If everyone is passing their SOLs, doesn't it show that a four day school week is just as good, if not better than a five day school week? If everyone is doing fine, why don't we help nurture learning in a more controlled way, rather than bombarding students with nonstop work?