By Daisy Morales, Social Media Editor
You wake up, pick your outfit, pack your lunch, grab your phone and rush out the door so that you don’t get stuck in traffic. As you arrive at school, you see a crowd of students waiting to be let in. At one point everything about this routine seemed normal, now we go to school uncertain of what will happen next.
When was the last time we had a normal school year? While it sounds impossible to believe, the last normal school year was almost two years ago, and as a result, many students have not experienced what it truly means to be in high school.
Two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted my ninth-grade year and forced many students, myself included, into a new learning environment.
Last year, school was all over the place from in-person to virtual learning, so students felt a learning gap in their school lives. And this year, even with the implementation of masks, students still look forward to a “normal” school year.
School was once a place of social interaction, where we would go and socialize with our peers. We would share the new trends and make jokes during class. But during the pandemic, Google Meets and Zoom calls were our only means of communication.
For some, remote learning was fine, but after a certain time all of us came upon the realization that something was off. Now we look back and realize we missed our time away.
But it wasn’t just the lack of socialization; learning was also at its worst. And while many teachers taught to the best of their abilities, some students continued to struggle.
This year students are looking forward to a better learning environment, and while we might not like all our classes, if last year taught us something it’s that we value our time in a classroom environment.
When the pandemic hit the United States, many students went into a shell of isolation, not just physically but mentally. According to many American statistical reports (including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), mental health was at an all-time low. The CDC reported that 40.9% of the American population struggled with mental health during the pandemic.
Hopefully, this year is better. School should be a place of support and help for those who need it. For those who don’t, school is equally important because it provides much-needed learning and interactions.
Teachers have been using every moment to take back all the time they have lost. Math teachers are eager to teach trigonometric identities and pythagorean theorems and English teachers can’t wait to get their students reading.
As teachers adapt to this new learning environment, so do students; mask breaks and hand sanitizing have taken part in our normal routines.
This year we are expecting our normal activities, like field trips and eating lunch in the cafeteria, to be restored. We look forward to lunch surrounded by our friends, not in a quiet room where we can hear our own munching.
As school slowly moves back to normal, we are all hoping that school stays open, not just for the sake of our learning but for the sake of our mental and overall health.
Before COVID we would treat school like it was nothing, but after our time away from school we realized the value of school or as Charles Dickens would say in his novel Great Expectations, “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”
Junior Daisy Morales can be reached at 23moralesda04@daretolearn.org.
