COVID Impacts on Middle/High School-Level Students

By Carolyn Chin

Another year, another challenge.

Here we are again. Facing another year of COVID where everything still feels like a mess and we still are unsure of how our futures will look. Middle and high schoolers are more aware of the crazy changes happening and wish things were getting better. Will everything feel 'normal' again? What even are the new guidelines we must follow? Why don't we look at a brief timeline of the beginning of COVID?

Just from this brief look alone, we can see that there has been lots of progress, but COVID isn't over. Students may be back in school, but there's still a lot of impact it has made to students coming back or staying virtual. Here we will look deeper into how COVID has effected students and teachers together.

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Learning Targets

Describe new guidelines and safety policies placed due to COVID
Describe teacher and staff's mindset of new policies
Explain student's mental and emotional impact from COVID

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What COVID-19 policies are in place with secondary school opening?

After two years of quarantine and isolation, COVID continues to be on the rise with the new delta variants and cases rising every day. Even then, schools have begun to reopen their doors and with reopening are new policies. In the previous COVID school year, students were all virtual and some school districts have allowed part of the student community to return back in school. This 2021-2022 school year, there are new policies placed by the U.S. Department of Education and a bit closer in state by the Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS). The U.S. Department of Education (2021) states that schools can reopen if they are able to follow the CDC guidelines placed while still focusing on the education of students. An example would be masks for all students and staff to wear at all times while inside the building. VBCPS (2021) follow the same guidelines as the U.S. Department of Education, but are furthering their policies in regard to extracurricular activity and are not approving facility use requests outside of the school. So there would be no after school events outside of sports team trainings. If a student or teacher must quarantine/isolate due to either having COVID or have been in contact with someone who had it, the U.S. Department of Education (2021) and VBCPS (2021) have both agreed what should be done for each. Students will continue to receive lessons through the aid of the teacher virtually. All school work will also be accessible online so as to not have the child be left behind. Teachers who test positive are still able to communicate with the students through virtual lesson or even in class using the smart board as a screen to project the teacher via zoom.

How are teachers and staff taking in schools reopening?

Although, teachers still have some concerns over how the schools will handle reopening, they are excited to finally not have to deal with the virtual learning and home troubleshooting they would need to do in order to help educate their students. According to Ruppert and Pisano (2020), students are still meeting expectations from changing over from intermediate to secondary education from virtual learning due to COVID-19 in 2020. Their data reflects that the first-year students who took part in the research were majorly meeting grade-level expectations for English writing and some were even exceeding the expectation. With this in mind, I believe teachers haven’t had much concern over educating the students coming back and how it could run in the classrooms. Teachers showed more concerns during the pandemic regarding the reopening of schools, transportation for students, cleaning supply stock, and if there is another outbreak of COVID (Pattison, Hoke, Schaefer, Alter, & Sehkar, 2021). Even though teachers are more concerned of how to maintain keeping schools open, they still care for the well-being of the students and want to create a safe educational place for them.

Are students doing okay since schools have reopened?

Here is a short video of one student's representation of how students feel during these times.

During COVID, most students were all doing virtual learning from home. This caused mental health for students to decline from the isolation and lack of communication received on a ‘normal’ basis like some students for Ms. Katzer who tried to keep communication but was struggling to stay connected (Levin, 2020). I believe COVID has affected children's mental health severely and even with schools reopening, the strange differences from what was regular everyday before. Yoder (2020) described that students stayed diligent with their work, but due to the prolonged quarantining, their mental health was declining which did affect their work. There was a lack of real-time feed back for students who are still virtual and issues wit properly discussing an collaborating with peers for school assignments and projects. Schools have since reopened, still with policies placed for students and staff’s safety in mind, and that alone helped bring some normalcy to the pandemic. Even then, if students need to quarantine due to exposure or testing positive, they return back into the same space that affected their well being causing negative progress.

In Conclusion...

The delta variant of COVID-19 has brought a scare to what felt like hope in American society. With this in mind, the U.S. Department of Education (2021) and VBCPS (2021) are continuously monitoring COVID-19 spread and current updates through CDC to see if any policies need to be updated or if virtual learning has to be in place again for people’s safety. Some parents haven’t taken COVID very well and have been saying “the world is so upside down, and nothing is right” (Levin, 2020). However the schools, administration, and teachers are all trying their best to help the students and continue in school teaching for as long as possible. Since the start of COVID-19, there have been new teaching strategies developing everyday. Hopefully this will bring a new wave of different teaching strategies that can be implemented the best for in person and virtual learning.

POP QUIZ!

Which policy wasn't mentioned through the U.S. Department of Education or VBCPS?

A. No faculty use requests outside of schools.

B. Masks required at all times.

C. Students don't have to do homework if quarantining.

D. Students require to attend lesson virtually.

Tracey hasn't been to school in a year as she was one of the virtual only students for a while. She was picked to come back to school the coming school year and is excited and nervous. Why would she be nervous?

A. Having a mean teacher who gives her lots of homework

B. Making new friends at school is always scary

C. Unsure if she'll fit in since she's been away doing virtual learning

D. Worried she has something in her hair

References

Levin, D. (2020). In a world ‘so upside down,’ the virus is taking a toll on young people’s mental health. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-young-people-emotional-toll.html

Pattison, K., Hoke, A., Schaefer, E., Alter, J., & Sekhar, D. (2021). National survey of school employees: COVID‐19, school reopening, and student wellness. The Journal of School Health, Vol 91(Iss. 5) 376-383. DOI: 10.1111/josh.13010

Ruppert, N. B. and Pisano, J. (2020). Teaching candidates to assess student learning: A COVID collaboration with arts and sciences faculty. Current Issues in Middle Level Education, Vol. 25(Iss. 2) 35-42. DOI: 10.20429/cimle.2021.250207

U.S. Department of Education. (2021). Supporting Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Maximizing In-Person Learning and Implementing Effective Practices for Students in Quarantine and Isolation. https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/supporting-students-during-covid-19-pandemic

Virginia Beach City Public Schools (2021). Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://www.vbschools.com/students/health_and_guidance_services/coronavirus

Yoder, S. (2020). Middle school is often difficult. Try experiencing it under quarantine. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/06/19/middle-school-coronavirus/

Answers

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