Covid Killed Education
Journalism Class Investigates Impact Of Covid On Schools
Google Meets was a feature of online learning during Covid times.
November 5, 2022
On the week of March 9, 2020, Chester High School and the whole world were hit with the bus that was the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. The week was spent discussing the plans for the intended two weeks off of school. It was announced to the students that Monday, March 16, would be the students’ last day in school before two weeks of online schooling. For the next 1½ years, it waswas a mix of fully and partly online classes, half days, masks, and a lot of quarantining at home.
Students spent their days sitting by a computer with a camera on their faces or sitting at a desk six feet away from their peers with a mask on their faces. Students and staff equally disliked these conditions.
Students were suffering in regard to state testing. An article from the College Board explains this, saying, “1.5 million students in the high school class of 2021 took the SAT at least once, down from 2.2 million in the class of 2020,” and many colleges stopped requiring the SAT and ACT in the application process. Students continued to suffer in regards to their education.
“I could barely do math before, but now I can’t do math at all,” said Julia Venus, a senior at CHS. Loss of a normal education has caused such a pause in education that students have lost the information they had learned pre-pandemic.
CHS Guidance Counselor, Mrs. Hawkins, was asked about the effect of Covid on education, saying the “learning process stopped,” and how it was something new. She explained that statements about losing sports or senior year, for instance, are less important than the loss of one’s education. She discussed the question of when and where do the students make up for that loss of education, whether that be in the younger grades or in junior college. Students and their education suffered in the years of Covid.
When masks finally came off in the classroom, school became more of what it used to be, a return to normal. But the lasting effects of the pandemic were still setting in. “I didn’t want to stop wearing it, but I felt pressured to not,” said Kerringtyn Malley, a senior at CHS.
Students started doing extra-curricular activities again, but at lower numbers. Sports teams, band, and other activities dropped in numbers during and after the pandemic.
“Motivating is next to impossible,” said Mr. Colonel, to parents at the CHS Open House. Students have continued to struggle with the motivation to do things like sports, clubs, and even just normal school work.
The pandemic had a lasting impact on the world of education and the world as a whole. It will take time and effort to recover from the effects of Covid. The pandemic was a whirlwind of those 2 years, and the world did its best to handle it, with policies, mandates, and a complete change in the way it functioned.
