Brooke Tindal, 15, used to commute 16 miles from her home in Queens to her elementary and middle schools in Brooklyn, waking up at 5:50 a.m. every morning to get there.
She realized how much time that ate up in her day when schools were forced to go remote during the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, she had more time to work on projects for her favorite art class, and was less exhausted because she didn’t have to lug a backpack around, especially after her long commute. She felt more productive than during in-person school day when she would always be “waiting for students to finish so we can move on already,” she says.
