On October 20th, 2025, Amazon had a shutdown of all of their websites. This was resolved later that day, but long after the LZHS school day had ended. This Included Canvas, Securly, and Clever, each of which is used by our school.
“Well, when I woke up in the morning, I saw that AWS was offline, which is Amazon Web Services,” John Walsh, principal of LZHS, said. “I knew it was impacting a ton of different apps, so I assumed some of our amps would be down. But it wasn’t just Canvas. We had about 75% of our apps down.”
Many teachers had to think on their feet of what to do in class. While some teachers used white boards or discussions, Brendan Glenn, math teacher, used a variety of methods.
“I was able to pivot by offering paper copies of the assignment we were doing in class,” Glenn said. “It was easy to pivot because I usually have paper copies already available. I also used Apple Classroom to export a PDF to my entire class. “
According to Reuters, a news site that covers legal and business topics, Amazon is also planning layoffs and using AI to assist with it. This could affect its functionality moving forwards, which causes problems according to Glenn.
“Assignment due dates were postponed because I did not want to have to collect paper copies of homework,” Glenn said. “I was pushing back the deadlines for assignments until Canvas was back working. “
Students say that the shutdown affected their abilities to learn, even with teachers pivoting.
“Without canvas, I could not see everything that I have,” Larissa Salituro, senior, said. “I had to sort of guess, because teachers didn’t postpone anything.”
At the end, the teachers had to make sure that their students had a proper learning environment. According to Walsh, he is certain every teacher could.
“While the teacher had to pivot, many prevailed and pushed forward. Many turned heel and made our teachers great teachers, and they know how to pivot,” Walsh said. “So when something goes down like that, they just have a backup plan. Teachers always have a backup plan for what they can do. They’re very good at working on their feet, particularly our teachers at Lake Zurich High School.”
