Keren Sanchez is a freshman who dropped out of school in the beginning of the first semester. She has been homeschooled for nearly 8 years and she left school mainly because of COVID-19. 

“To just be thrown into a building with a bunch of other people, it was just too much to take in,” Keren said. “I ended up feeling too overwhelmed and they took me out.” 

Keren struggled with not being comfortable enough to socialize with other students, “With all the new changes I had to adjust to and plus me having social anxiety it was really difficult,” she continued, “at times it felt like I couldn’t talk and if I tried to-it would either come out as a huge stutter or too quiet for anyone to hear.” 

Her father, Fernando Sanchez, shared his opinion on homeschooling. “I think homeschooling is good for some students and sometimes in public schools, where it has the cookie-cutter approach, where you either get the subject or you don’t,” he continues, “in homeschool you can go at your pace and incorporate different kinds of modes of knowledge that sometimes public schools don’t embrace.” 

Sanchez talks about the reasons why he took his daughter out of school.  

One reason is that the governor refused to allow El Paso to regulate itself from being able to wear masks and it is the scientific and logical thing to do. “Despite this, they still wanted to penalize instructors and coaches for asking students to wear a mask,” Sanchez continues, “I thought that was unconstitutional and unhealthy and dangerous to all the kids, even if they don’t get too sick, they bring sicknesses to their parents and grandparents that have autoimmune systems where it can be compromised to individuals.” 

Another reason that Keren’s parents took her out was that the school district itself had a system that was difficult to follow for someone who came out of homeschool, “I think it was called Schoology, if you weren’t in the system for a long time then it would be somewhat difficult to try – and it was almost harder to figure out what the assignment was verses the actual assignment,” Sanchez continues, “there was nobody there at the school to help with that transition like to help and teach my daughter on how to use Schoology.” 

Keren struggled too much with no help and ended up getting taken out of school.