Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Alanna Hamel’s L’Anse High School students attend class outside Wednesday. Hamel also brought a Chromebook for students attending remotely.

L’ANSE — After nearly six months, students are back at L’Anse Area Schools.

“There was a lot of energy the first day of school,” Superintendent Susan Tollefson said. “It’s great to hear those voices in the building again.”

L’Anse Area Schools, along with Baraga Area Schools, began classes Tuesday. They join Ontonagon Area Schools and the Ewen-Trout Creek Consolidated School District, which started last week.

In the early days of the new school year, students have been complying with the new procedures required for COVID-19, Tollefson said.

“For the most part, students were excellent with wearing their masks,” she said. “It’s all new, so of course some of it is giving a few reminders.”

For the first two days, extra school personnel are riding the bus routes to assist in communicating expectations for the buses, which Tollefson said was helpful.

About 9.5% of district students opted for remote learning — 7% in the elementary school, and 12% among sixth through 12th grades.

One of those who came back for in-person instruction was 11th-grader Dysean Allen.

“I like being in the class with the teacher, being able to interact with the teacher,” said Allen, sporting a SpongeBob SquarePants mask. “I get why people did online. It’s a health concern and they care for their health.”

Allen said it felt great being back in the building after six months.

“It’s great to see the people, my friends and some teachers and not be stuck at home all day,” he said.

The mask-wearing, and especially the spacing, were the biggest changes Allen noticed. Where possible, classes have been readjusted to get students as close to 6 feet apart as possible.

Extra custodial cleaning has been added in the middle of the day, with an enhanced checklist for night cleaning as well, Tollefson said.

The atmosphere around recess and lunchtime is quieter than usual, Tollefson said. To reduce crowding, lunches were divided by grade. Students also have more places to eat lunch: the old C.J. Sullivan Elementary School gym has been converted to a lunch space, while kids can also eat in the commons area.

Recesses have also been scaled back to one classroom at a time.

“Instead of 120 kids out there, you’ve got 20,” Tollefson said.

For sports, those who show up to indoor games are required to wear a mask. At games such as the volleyball match against Lake Linden this week, crowds are restricted – each player got two vouchers for two family members to attend. Family members are asked to only attend games for their children; for instance, if their child is a freshman, they cannot stick around for the varsity game.

Allen, a running back for L’Anse’s football team, hopes to be able to play this year. Fall football was canceled statewide with plans to resume in the spring. On Monday, the Michigan High School Athletic Association announced it was reconsidering the decision to cancel the fall season after looking at successes in other states.

“I’m a little annoyed, but at the end of the day, health is the most important thing for human beings, so I get why they did it,” Allen said. “All I can do is hope and pray they’ll eventually bring it back.”

With no football season, there might be a mini-homecoming centered around volleyball, with an outside parade, Tollefson said. However, assemblies and high school dances won’t be happening at this time.

Classes are also arranged to keep grade levels separate. Sixth-graders are kept on the first floor of the old high school, with different teachers coming to them.

“This is all temporary, we hope,” Tollefson said. “We will go back to the mixing of students more if we go back to Phase 6.”

The state is requiring districts to reevaluate their plans for continued learning each month. It’s a time-consuming process, but has the benefits of allowing them to tweak policy as they go, Tollefson said.

With a mix of in-person and remote students — and the possibility of classes moving in either direction — teachers had to prepare ways to teach both. All teachers have set up something through Google Classroom, though they can choose their own mix of live or recorded instruction, Tollefson said.

“If they do transition back in, the distant learners will be on the exact same content topic and have had the same assignments and work to that point as the students who are actually physically in school,” she said.

When high school science teacher Alanna Hamel took her class outside Wednesday, she brought a Chromebook so students at home could watch with Google Meets.

In most cases, Hamel is converting assignments that would have been paper worksheets into Google Docs, so students can submit them online. She’s doing that even with in-person students, to minimize paper contact.

She might do that even after COVID.

“I think it’ll be a little bit more streamlined,” she said. “Students won’t have to worry about losing their work.”

In an earlier period Wednesday morning, Hamel checked in with a remote student while walking back to the school.

“She said, ‘It’s surprising. It’s almost like I’m there in the classroom,'” Hamel said. “So that made me feel good, that I was being attentive enough to the remote students.”

In addition to reducing paper contact, Hamel made other changes to the classroom to minimize the chance of COVID spread. At the end of each period, students wipe down their desk and anything they might have touched. Students are encouraged to bring their own equipment, such as calculators; borrowed equipment goes in a bucket for Hamel to sanitize.

Hamel even gave each student a Ziploc bag with their own dry erase marker and pencil.

“With physics and chemistry, you’re drawing things to come up with concepts,” she said. “They need to still be able to have something tangible that they’re doing.”

Although Hamel had been nervous, she’s been pleased with how the students responded.

“They’re appreciative to be here, so they’re willing to follow the rules and get along well,” she said.