Summer is so close you can practically taste the ice cream dripping down your wrist. But before we hit the beaches, cottages, outdoor concerts and family trips, there’s just one pressing item on the docket: finishing the school year.
Sometimes, it’s a cruel by-product of circumstance that the last few weeks of a course are the hardest. You have massive final exams to study for, final assignments to turn in and heavily weighted group projects to execute. At the same time, you feel like you’re running on fumes.

It’s sort of a cliched rite of passage to warn outgoing high school students about how challenging university is. “Buckle up, because university math might as well be taught in Greek,” some might say. And while that’s clearly an over-exaggeration meant to scare incoming frosh, there’s some grain of truth in it.

As Ontario’s leading academy for online high school courses, we at OES tend to naturally sing the praises of online learning. When you see the success stories first-hand, every day like we do – the students who flourish in a self-paced environment, the students who reach a potential they didn’t even think possible – it’s hard not to be full-throated in your praise.

In the history of education, online learning is an incredibly recent addition. As such, there isn’t quite the same volume of “instructional resources” behind it, like tips, best practices guides, etc. Traditional brick-and-mortar education has enjoyed centuries of self-betterment deliberation – with thinkers creating a veritable cottage industry out of how-to guides and student advice. It’s high time online learning did the same.

The history of education is a long one – but not an especially varied one. For centuries, the epicentre of secondary school education was the physical classroom, a purpose-built space for synchronistic, tightly scheduled learning.

There are several ways to measure the success of a school. The traditional way is to define it according to academic performance, particularly on standardized tests. This is the way school headmasters of old benchmarked success, and it remains in practice today. Conversely, some educational experts prefer to define success through a “student happiness index,” arguing that contentment – not a test – is the hallmark of a prospering school.

The new year can be a roller coaster for grade 12 students in Ontario. After years of settling into the high school groove – perfecting the cycle of semesters, mid-terms, projects and finals – students take the first months of a year to look toward an unknown future. Many prepare for the next stage of their educational career: post-secondary school.

With the holidays over and gifts unwrapped, students across Ontario cast their attention to the semester ahead. For many students, it isn’t a gift that lies ahead; it’s the near-opposite. It is, of course, the dreaded “exam season.”

School can be demanding. When you aren’t gearing up for a final exam in English, you’re plugging away at an assignment in History. When you aren’t racing to meet the OUAC deadlines for university applications, you’re racing toward three other deadlines for end-of-semester. Sometimes, it can feel like a spinning plates act – a nerve-wracking attempt to keep everything from crashing down.

Across Ontario, we’re beginning to see blankets of snow, gusts of whipping wind, and ice slabs forming in the vast Great Lakes. And if you’re a student in Ontario, you’ll notice that it isn’t just the weather changing; all around you, you see Ontario students gearing up for a long break from the classroom.

The winter break, which lasts roughly two weeks and spans the major religious holidays, makes a modicum of sense in the context of brick-and-mortar school education. The winter break gives teachers and administrators time to hit the reset button, arriving at a new semester freshly rested and ready to corral a large classroom of students for another semester. It also gives parents a rest from having to commute their kids to school.