Middle schoolers at Southeast Middle School have returned to school on Monday Jan. 6 after an extended Winter Break caused by wildfires and unhealthy air quality in LA on Thursday Jan. 9 and Friday Jan. 10. After Winter Break, extreme winds caused wildfires to unleash, leading us to get two extra days off of school after only being back two days.

Shaela Ramirez, DREAMS 8th Grader, says she feels strange coming back. During break she felt very relaxed and free to use her devices more often. But now, returning back to school, she has to get used to her morning routine and wake up earlier.

7th grade SEMS student, Jeremy Bodega, talked about one of the things he wishes to improve in this year: his grades. He wants to get better grades this school semester in order to aim for a higher GPA.

Over break, most students missed their friends they did not see. DREAMS 8th graders Shaela Ramirez and Maria Abrego mentioned that seeing and hanging out with her friends became one of the reasons she wanted to go back to school.

SEMS student Alexander talks about his Winter Break being overall good and that he has very positive feelings about the return back to school. Like Jeremy B, he also wishes to improve his grades this school semester as he heads on to the next grade.

Another SEMS student, Erick, says that being back at school has not affected him at all. He claims that “being back at school feels the same as it did before”.

Overall, students mostly have positive feelings about coming back to school with some doubts in between mostly because of the unsafe environment the fires caused. Even though we started this semester off roughly, students hope to improve on what they did not complete last semester, with a fresh clean start.

Two days after returning from Winter Break, LAUSD canceled schools on Friday and Thursday to ensure the safety of their students and staff.

For more information on how students felt coming back, visit Aaron Diaz’s article on The LA Fires.