March 13, 2020 is when the world shut down due to COVID-19. The Trump administration started with a travel ban, even on the non-U.S. citizens traveling from the 26 European countries, then seizing the activity on water, and continuing to shut down more public places such as schools on March 15, 2020.
We kids thought, “hooray a longer spring break then go back to school,” but no. Kids were stuck inside for about a year, and got back into school Aug. 2020 on google meets, then in April 2021 kids went back in person one day in school then one day online and continued that until the end of the year.
Although the world was in lockdown and we couldn’t do much, staying at home and not having to go to school. But people were also lacking human interaction, mental health started to decline and were dying from COVID.
“It was kind of peaceful and calming to be away from school and all the anxiety,” Landyn Peters, a sophomore at MCHS said.
Overall learning online can be difficult, nothing can replace learning in person in a classroom where you have a bunch of resources right there in front of you. Learning online was uncharted water. Nothing like the pandemic has happened in our lifetime, so learning for students had to be figured out on the fly. Which was not easy.
“There was a learning gap between fifth and sixth grade,” said Peters, “I definitely missed some units and it was kind of complicated to catch back up on the parts I missed.”
COVID-19 had the same effects on teachers, some were in college trying to finish their last year of school off strong.
“As a math major..the hardest thing is learning math online,” Nicole Alonso, a math teacher at MCHS said.
Other teachers that have been teaching for a while had to learn how to teach online right away, obviously they haven’t gone through something like this before. But since kids had to learn online, turning in work made it somewhat easier than writing everything down, losing your paper and having to do it again, or wait for a simple homework assignment to be given back to you.
There could be good outcomes of the pandemic, but it ruined good ways of learning and turning it around and making us learn online. Which was hard to learn on the fly. Overall, COVID changed everything for bad and for good, not just academically.