Aftermath of pandemic increases attention, concern toward mental health

“RECOVERY” continued from page 1

Teachers also had to make amendments to their prepandemic teaching routines, such as using new software like Schoology and making sure individual students were attended to. They also created separate lesson plans for virtual and on-site students to match their respective learning environments.

“Before [the pandemic], we hadn’t used Schoology for putting assignments or grading tests, so that — [along with setting] aside a time to be face to face with each [online] student — took a while to figure out,” German teacher Tanya Foster said.

Although some teachers managed their own classes, other teachers, including Tollett, chose to share the workload with other teachers within their departments.

“Initially, for the first semester, we all taught our own students; so I had ten total classes,” Tollett said. “[However] the second semester, my counterpart [chemistry teacher Tara] Wodzicki took all of the advanced chemistry classes and I took all the AP classes.”

While online modules allowed students to work seamlessly between home and school with minimal contact, social distancing and sanitization during hands-on activities was still a challenge.

“It was difficult to manage supplies in the classroom because so much of what we have is community supplies,” art teacher Lindsey Gough said. “So being really conscious about sanitizing one class [after] another was difficult.”

Change And Continuity

Furthermore, the CSISD school board implemented new measures to ensure that students’ grades were not negatively affected by quarantine, sickness or any other changes brought about by the pandemic.

“The district had us change our grading policies,” Tollett said. “[So] we had to accept late work that was submitted whenever students wanted to submit them but that’s gone back pretty much to normal now.”

Even though the prepandemic grading scales and exemption policies were restored, and virtual school has been discontinued, many responsibilities like making online modules and uploading lesson slides to Schoology that arose during the pandemic still continue today.

“There is an expectation that everything we do within the classroom should be available to students on the web, or on Schoology, or via YouTube [and] that teachers will do significantly more than [what] we did prior to the spring of 2020,” Tollett said.

Since video modules made during the pandemic are owned by teachers — many of whom have left — rather than the district, many of these modules are no longer accessible.

“The assumption [is] that everything we created and used during COVID is still available today,” Tollett said. “Teachers have quit since then [and] deleted these [videos] that they created— so now we are recreating those [modules].”

Mental Health

Social interaction — or lack thereof — during the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the mental wellness of students and teachers alike.

“Being isolated can cause someone to feel more sadness, depression or [anxiety],” psychology and sociology teacher Lindsay Zahn said. “We’re social beings; even though we’d like to have alone time, we’re not meant to be isolated from the world.”

As students return to the standard way of schooling, teachers have noticed that the modified academic standards during the pandemic have an underlying effect on student performance and motivation.

“Being intrinsically motivated is not something that comes naturally to everybody,” Gough said. “I feel some of that has changed [and] there’s a general sense of defeat even before trying sometimes.”

Additionally, the absence of social interaction has also resulted in students missing out on various aspects of social development. As students get adjusted to a new routine post-pandemic, they have to relearn social skills such as conflict management, interaction with adults or even just reading the room.

“The main [difference] all of the teachers have noticed is that students aren’t quite up to where they would normally be if COVID hadn’t happened,”

Foster said. “We’re trying to catch them up, [but] a lot of it is more behavior-wise, not so much the actual learning.”

Teachers and administrators strive to make sure students feel safe — both emotionally and physically — by helping them navigate through disagreements and anger.

“When [students] don’t know how to handle conflict, we see a rise in behaviors of students acting out,” Zahn said. “[But] our administration was very patient [and] supportive of [teachers] trying to understand the impact of the pandemic on students.”

Along with the growing attention toward student mental well-being, Gough also expressed the need to re-examine the current academic standards in order to maintain their relevance in the present day.

“I think the bar needs to be reevaluated realistically so that we can assess kids and hold [them] to standards that make sense,” Gough said. “Holding people to the same standards as before doesn’t seem right.”

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, priorities have changed for many teachers; students’ mental wellness now takes a front seat as opposed to teaching curriculum in a limited time.

“Because of the pandemic and all the issues that came along with it, we realize [now] more than ever, that sometimes taking care of our students’ mental health is more important than the information that we have to get across,” Zahn said.