going back to school after covid 19 essay in english

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Headed Back to School: A Look at the Ongoing Effects of COVID-19 on Children’s Health and Well-Being

Elizabeth Williams and Patrick Drake Published: Aug 05, 2022

Children are now preparing to head back to school for the third time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools are expected to return in-person this fall, with most experts now agreeing the benefits of in-person learning outweigh the risks of contracting COVID-19 for children. Though children are less likely than adults to develop severe illness, the risk of contracting COVID-19 remains, with some children developing symptoms of long COVID following diagnosis. COVID-19 vaccines provide protection, and all children older than 6 months are now eligible to be vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have stalled and remain low for younger children. At this time, only a few states have vaccine mandates for school staff or students, and no states have school mask mandates, though practices can vary by school district. Emerging COVID-19 variants, like the Omicron subvariant BA.5 that has recently caused a surge in cases, may pose new risks to children and create challenges for the back-to-school season.

Children may also continue to face challenges due to the ongoing health, economic, and social consequences of the pandemic. Children have been uniquely impacted by the pandemic, having experienced this crisis during important periods of physical, social, and emotional development, with some experiencing the loss of loved ones. While many children have gained health coverage due to federal policies passed during the pandemic, public health measures to reduce the spread of the disease also led to disruptions or changes in service utilization and increased mental health challenges for children.

This brief examines how the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect children’s physical and mental health, considers what the findings mean for the upcoming back-to-school season, and explores recent policy responses. A companion KFF brief explores economic effects of the pandemic and recent rising costs on households with children. We find households with children have been particularly hard hit by loss of income and food and housing insecurity, which all affect children’s health and well-being.

Children’s Health Care Coverage and Utilization

Despite job losses that threatened employer-sponsored insurance coverage early in the pandemic, uninsured rates have declined likely due to federal policies passed during in the pandemic and the safety net Medicaid and CHIP provided. Following growth in the children’s uninsured rate from 2017 to 2019, data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) show that the children’s uninsured rate held steady from 2019 to 2020 and then fell from 5.1% in 2020 to 4.1% in 2021. Just released quarterly NHIS data show the children’s uninsured rate was 3.7% in the first quarter of 2022, which was below the rate in the first quarter of 2021 (4.6%) but a slight uptick from the fourth quarter of 2021 (3.5%), though none of these differences are statistically significant. Administrative data show that children’s enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP increased by 5.2 million enrollees, or 14.7%, between February 2020 and April 2022 (Figure 1). Provisions in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) require states to provide  continuous coverage  for Medicaid enrollees until the end of the month in which the public health emergency (PHE) ends in order to receive enhanced federal funding.

Children have missed or delayed preventive care during the pandemic, with a third of adults still reporting one or more children missed or delayed a preventative check-up in the past 12 months (Figure 2). However, the share missing or delaying care is slowly declining, with the share from April 27 – May 9, 2022 (33%) down 3% from almost a year earlier (July 21 – August 2, 2021) according to KFF analysis of the  Household Pulse Survey . Adults in households with income less than $25,000 were significantly more likely to have a child that missed, delayed, or skipped a preventive appointment in the past 12 months compared to households with income over $50,000. These data are in line with findings from another study that found households reporting financial hardship were significantly more likely to report missing or delaying children’s preventive visits compared to those not reporting hardships. Hispanic households and households of other racial/ethnic groups were also significantly more likely to have a child that missed, delayed, or skipped a preventive appointment in the past 12 months compared to White households (based on race of the adult respondent).

Telehealth helped to provide access to care, but children with special health care needs and those in rural areas continued to face barriers. Overall, telehealth utilization soared early in the pandemic, but has since declined and has not offset  the decreases in service utilization overall. While preventative care rates have increased since early in the pandemic, many children likely still need to catch up on missed routine medical care. One study found almost a quarter of parents reported not catching-up after missing a routine medical visit during the first year of the pandemic. The pandemic may have also exacerbated existing challenges accessing needed care and services for children with special health care needs , and low-income patients or patients in rural areas may have experienced barriers to accessing health care via telehealth .

The pandemic has also led to declines in children’s routine vaccinations, blood lead screenings, and vision screenings. The CDC reported vaccination coverage of all state-required vaccines declined by 1% in the 2020-2021 school year compared to the previous year, and some public health leaders note COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy may be spilling over to routine child immunizations. The  CDC also report ed 34% fewer U.S. children had blood lead level testing from January-May 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Further, data suggest declines in lead screenings during the pandemic may have exacerbated underlying gaps and disparities in early identification and intervention for lower-income households and children of color. Additionally, many children rely on in-school vision screenings to identity vision impairments, and some children went without vision checks while schools managed COVID-19 and turned to remote learning. These screenings are important for children in order to identify problems early; without treatment some conditions can worsen or lead to more serious health complications.

The pandemic has also led to difficulty accessing and disruptions in dental care. Data from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) show the share of children reporting seeing a dentist or other oral health provider or having a preventive dental visit in the past 12 months declined from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the pandemic (Figure 3). The share of children reporting their teeth are in excellent or very good conditions also declined from 2019 (80%) to 2020 (77%); the share of children reporting no oral health problems also declined but the change was not statistically significant.

Recently released preliminary data for Medicaid/CHIP beneficiaries under age 19 shows steep declines in service utilization early in the pandemic, with utilization then rebounding to a varying degree depending on the service type . Child screening services have rebounded to pre-PHE levels while blood lead screenings and dental services rates remain below per-PHE levels. Telehealth utilization mirrors national trends, increasing rapidly in April 2020 and then beginning to decline in 2021. When comparing the PHE period (March 2020 – January 2022) to the pre-PHE period (January 2018 – February 2020) overall, the data show child screening services and vaccination rates declined by 5% (Figure 4). Blood lead screening services and dental services saw larger declines when comparing the PHE period to before the PHE, declining by 12% and 18% respectively among Medicaid/CHIP children.

Children’s Mental Health Challenges

Children’s mental health challenges were on the rise even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent KFF analysis found the share of adolescents experiencing anxiety and/or depression has increased by one-third from 2016 (12%) to 2020 (16%), although rates in 2020 were similar to 2019.  Rates of anxiety and/or depression were more pronounced among adolescent females and White and Hispanic adolescents. A separate  survey  of high school students in 2021 found that lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) students were more likely to report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness than their heterosexual peers. In the past few years, adolescents  have experienced worsened emotional health, increased stress, and a lack of peer connection along with increasing rates of drug overdose deaths, self-harm, and eating disorders. Prior to the pandemic, there was also an increase in suicidal thoughts from 14% in 2009 to 19% in 2019.

The pandemic may have worsened children’s mental health or exacerbated existing mental health issues among children . The pandemic caused disruptions in routines and social isolation for children, which can be  associated with anxiety and depression  and  can have implications  for mental health later in life. A number of studies show an increase in children’s mental health needs following social isolation due to the pandemic, especially among children who experience adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). KFF analysis found the share of parents responding that adolescents were experiencing anxiety and/or depression held relatively steady from 2019 (15%) to 2020 (16%), the first year of the pandemic. However, the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor on perspectives of the pandemic at two years found six in ten parents say the pandemic has negatively affected their children’s schooling and over half saying the same about their children’s mental health. Researchers also note it is still too early to fully understand the impact of the pandemic on children’s mental health. The past two years have also seen much economic turmoil, and  research  has shown that as economic conditions worsen, children’s mental health is negatively impacted. Further, gun violence continues to rise and may lead to negative mental health impacts among children and adolescents.  Research   suggests  that children and adolescents may experience negative mental health impacts, including symptoms of anxiety, in response to school shootings and  gun-related deaths  in their  communities .

Access and utilization of mental health care may have also  worsened during the pandemic. Preliminary data for Medicaid/CHIP beneficiaries under age 19 finds utilization of mental health services during the PHE declined by 23% when compared to prior to the pandemic (Figure 4); utilization of substance use disorder services  declined by 24% for beneficiaries ages 15-18 for the same time period. The data show utilization of mental health services remains below pre-PHE levels and has seen the smallest improvement compared to other services utilized by Medicaid/CHIP children. Telehealth has played a significant role in providing mental health and substance use services to children early in the pandemic, but has started to  decline . The pandemic may have widened existing disparities in access to mental health care for children of color and children in low-income households. NSCH data show 20% of children with mental health needs were not receiving needed care in 2020, with the lowest income children less likely to receive needed mental health services when compared to higher income groups (Figure 5).

Children’s Health and COVID-19

While less likely than adults to develop severe illness, children can contract and spread COVID-19 and  children with underlying health conditions  are at an increased risk of developing severe illness .  Data through July 28, 2022 show there have been over 14 million child COVID-19 cases, accounting for 19% of all cases. Among Medicaid/CHIP enrollees under age 19, 6.4% have received a COVID-19 diagnosis through January 2022. Pediatric hospitalizations peaked during the Omicron surge in January 2022, and children under age 5, who were not yet eligible for vaccination, were hospitalized for COVID-19 at five times the rate during the Delta surge.

Some children who tested positive for the virus are now facing long COVID . A recent meta-analysis found 25% of children and adolescents had ongoing symptoms following COVID-19 infection, and finds the most common symptoms for children were fatigue, shortness of breath, and headaches, with other long COVID symptoms including cognitive difficulties, loss of smell, sore throat, and sore eyes. Another report found a larger share of children with a confirmed COVID-19 case experienced a new or recurring mental health diagnosis compared to children who did not have a confirmed COVID-19 case. However, researchers have noted it can be difficult to distinguish long COVID symptoms to general pandemic-associated symptoms. In addition, a small share of children are experiencing multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a serious condition associated with COVID-19 that has impacted  almost 9,000 children . A lot of unknowns still surround long COVID in children; it is unclear how long symptoms will last and what impact they will have on children’s long-term health.

COVID-19 vaccines were recently authorized for children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years, making all children 6 months and older eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccination has already peaked for children under the age of 5, and is far below where 5-11 year-olds were at the same point in their eligibility. As of July 20, approximately 544,000 children under the age of 5 (or approximately 2.8%) had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Vaccinations for children ages 5-11 have stalled, with just  30.3%  have been fully vaccinated as of July 27 compared to  60.2% of those ages 12-17.  Schools have been important sites  for providing access as well as information to help expand vaccination take-up among children, though children under 5 are not yet enrolled in school, limiting this option for younger kids. A recent KFF survey finds most parents of young children newly eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine are reluctant to get them vaccinated, including 43% who say they will “definitely not” do so.

Some children have experienced COVID-19 through the loss of one or more family members due to the virus.  A  study  estimates that, as of June 2022, over 200,000 children in the US have lost one or both parents to COVID-19. Another study found children of color were more likely to experience the loss of a parent or grandparent caregiver when compared to non-Hispanic White children. Losing a parent can have long term impacts on a child’s health,  increasing  their risk of substance abuse, mental health challenges,  poor educational outcomes , and  early death . There have been over 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the US, and estimates indicate a  17.5% to 20% increase  in bereaved children due to COVID-19, indicating an increased number of grieving children who may need additional supports as they head back to school.

Looking Ahead

Children will be back in the classroom this fall but may continue to face health risks due to their or their teacher’s vaccination status and increasing transmission due to COVID-19 variants. New, more transmissible COVID-19 variants continue to emerge, with the most recent Omicron subvariant BA.5 driving a new wave of infections and reinfections among those who have already had COVID-19. This could lead to challenges for the back-to-school season, especially among young children whose vaccination rates have stalled.

Schools, parents, and children will likely continue to catch up on missed services and loss of instructional time in the upcoming school year. Schools are likely still working to address the loss of instructional time and drops in student achievement due to pandemic-related school disruptions. Further, many children with special education plans experienced missed or delayed services and loss of instructional time during the pandemic. Students with special education plans may be entitled to compensatory services to make up for lost skills due to pandemic related service disruptions, and some children, such as those with disabilities related to long COVID, may be newly eligible for special education services.

To address worsening mental health and barriers to care for children, several measures have been taken or proposed at the state and federal level. Many states have recently enacted legislation to strengthen school based mental health systems, including initiatives such as from hiring more school-based providers to allowing students excused absences for mental health reasons. In July 2022, 988 – a federally mandated crisis number – launched, providing a single three-digit number for individuals in need to access local and state funded crisis centers, and the Biden Administration released a strategy to address the national mental health crisis in May 2022, building on prior actions. Most recently, in response to gun violence, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was signed into law and allocates funds towards mental health, including trauma care for school children.

The unwinding of the PHE and expiring federal relief may have implications for children’s health coverage and access to care. The  American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) extended eligibility  to ACA health insurance subsides for people with incomes over 400% of poverty and increased the amount of assistance for people with lower incomes. However, these subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year without further action from Congress, which would increase premium payments for 13 million Marketplace enrollees. In addition, provisions in the FFCRA providing continuous coverage for Medicaid enrollees will expire with the end of the PHE. Millions of people, including children, could lose coverage when the continuous enrollment requirement ends if they are no longer eligible or face administrative barriers during the process despite remaining eligible. There will likely be variation across states in how many people are able to maintain Medicaid coverage, transition to other coverage, or become uninsured. Lastly, there have also been several policies passed throughout the pandemic to provide financial relief for families with children, but some benefits, like the expanded Child Tax Credit, have expired and the cost of household items is rising, increasing food insecurity and reducing the utility of benefits like SNAP.

• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Coronavirus

Also of Interest

• A Look at the Economic Effects of the Pandemic for Children
• Recent Trends in Mental Health and Substance Use Concerns Among Adolescents
• Mental Health and Substance Use Considerations Among Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID-19 Vaccination Rates Among Children Under 5 Have Peaked and Are Decreasing Just Weeks Into Their Eligibility

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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How schools and students have changed after 2 years of the pandemic

Anya Kamenetz

It's been two years since schools shut down around the world, and now masks are coming off in a move back to normalcy. What effect has the pandemic had on students' learning and development?

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Health Issues

COVID-19 & School: Keeping Kids Safe

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, students had their world turned upside down. Schools closed their doors as the virus spread quickly through communities. Since then, we have learned a lot.

One of the biggest lessons: students learn best in-person, and many are also exposed to vital relationships, resources, and other experiences they need to thrive at school.

A recent federal study found that for all students, reading and math scores are lower this year than they were in 2020. Scores were worst among students who were struggling before COVID. Daily attendance can make a big impact on long-term success and good health.

Read on for ways to keep your child or teen healthy and in school.

Vaccines & boosters

The AAP recommends COVID vaccination for everyone 6 months of age and older. Kids who are fully vaccinated are at a much lower risk of missing school due to being ill with COVID-19. Fully vaccinated kids don’t have to spend more time away from learning, friendships, sports and other activities.

Remember that fully vaccinated people can still become infected and spread the virus to others, but less than if they were not vaccinated. If your child or teen has recovered from COVID illness, they should still get the vaccine to reduce the risk of getting sick again.

Your child or teen should be up-to-date on all recommended vaccines, including flu, HPV, meningococcal, measles and other vaccines. Routine childhood and adolescent immunizations can be given with COVID-19 vaccines or in the days before and after. Getting caught up will avoid outbreaks of other illnesses that could keep your kids home from school. See Back to School: How to Help Your Child Have a Healthy Year for more information.

Masks, testing & staying home when sick

Masks are still a good idea. Although not required in many school districts, indoor masking is still beneficial. Masks help stop the spread of COVID—and other infections like the common cold or the flu . It is especially important to use well-fitting masks if your child is ineligible for the vaccine for medical reasons; immunocompromised; if a family member is at high risk; or there is a high rate of COVID in your community. Masks can help protect kids with immune compromise or disabilities from getting COVID, so they won’t have to miss school.

Most children with medical conditions can wear face masks with practice, support and role-modeling by adults. Ask your pediatrician if:

• you need help choosing a mask or personal protective equipment that offers the best fit and comfort based on a child’s medical or developmental needs or
• you have concerns that a mask cannot be worn and want to explore all options.

Planning for outbreaks. Right now, COVID variants and other viruses are circulating. Schools need to plan for outbreaks that may occur. People who have symptoms or are at high risk should be tested, following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines . And if you get a negative result on an at-home COVID-19 antigen test, the Food and Drug Administration advises repeat testing. This is because tests can sometimes show false-negative results.

COVID symptoms & what to do:

School-based support for students.

Many families will be recovering from the impacts of the pandemic for years to come. Here are some of the supports that families can access through school.

• Resources for families affected by housing or food insecurity
• Access to high-speed internet and devices to complete schoolwork
• Support, testing and necessary accommodations for students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or chronic, high-risk medical conditions
• Emotional and behavioral support and resources for students with anxiety , distress, suicidal thoughts and other needs

If your child needs support, do not hesitate to talk with your pediatrician and school staff (including school nurses). They are there to help you explore options and connect your family with support and resources.

More information

• Back to School: Tips to Help Kids Have a Healthy Year
• COVID-19 Guidance for Safe Schools and Promotion of In-Person Learning (AAP.org)

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• New Ways of Teaching
• Tips and Ideas

Returning to school after COVID-19?

Have you thought about what it will be like to return to face-to-face classes? In this article, we offer all relevant tips to return to class safely, to continue demonstrating your potential and your teaching skills.

Author: Andrew Foster.

Getting started

Finding out what students have been doing can help you to understand their needs now they are back at school.

Ask and answer: Ask them some questions about their time out of school, in either English or their home language (depending on their level). Write the questions on the board. Ask them to ask and answer the questions with a partner. Older students can then write on a piece of paper that you can collect and read afterwards. Let them choose which questions they want to talk about.

Choose some of the questions below and add your own.

• What did you do when the school was closed?
• What was good?
• What was difficult?
• Did you do anything different with your family or friends?
• Did you watch any TV programmes or listen to the radio in English?
• Did you use any websites or mobile apps for learning English?
• Did you speak in English at home? Who did you speak with?
• Did you read parts of your English coursebook or other books in English?

Ask some of the students to share their answers if they are too young to write their answers. Give encouragement and recognise any difficulties they have had. Use their replies to plan support for those learners who need it. After class, read anything that is written down and write a short reply to each student if you have time.

True or false: Ask students to write five sentences about what they did while school was closed, most true, but one or two that are not true. In pairs or groups, one student reads the sentences and the others listen to all, and then guess which are true and which are invented. 

Ideas for classroom management and learning

Adapting activities: Your school or country may have important rules to protect teachers, staff, learners and the community. Think about how new rules affect activities you can do with students in the classroom. If some are not suitable now, can you adapt or replace them with safer activities? For example:

• Pair work or groupwork might need more space, which means that students find it harder to hear their partner(s). Try setting up activities where one student is the speaker and the other responds with signals (for example, for ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’) or encourage learners to listen and use a number of brief, but suitable, responses which you teach them before they listen.
• Try some active listening tasks where the listener doesn’t speak but notes down the key points of what their partner says about a topic (for example, ‘Three things I liked or didn’t like about staying at home’. What were the three things? Were they likes or dislikes?).

Using the environment: If your school has outdoor space that is safe for children, can you use it? Is there anything there that you can use for language learning and to allow learners to use the space more? For example, could you use things in the area around the school for describing things by place, size or other description? Could you make a treasure hunt, using questions in English for children to find and answer?

Catching up: If learners have lost a lot of learning time, trying to cover the set syllabus may seem too much. Make sure that you keep checking what students are able to do with the language that they study. This may be through pair speaking, writing to another student, which you monitor, or a regular quiz.

Thinking about the future

Has any useful learning come from the experience of the closure? What could help to support learners when school is open, and which could be useful if any learners can’t come to school in the future? Are there things you can set up now to make it easier if school has to close again?

Try to find out if any learners or their parent need guidance to use information or activities that are sent to them. Can you give more time or attention to children or parents who could not access any support provided outside the school?

External links

• UNESCO guidance on preparing to return to school:
• UNESCO IIEP guidance on returning to school:

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Stress-Related Growth in Adolescents Returning to School After COVID-19 School Closure

1 Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

Kelly-Ann Allen

2 Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Gökmen Arslan

3 Department of Psychological Counselling and Guidance, Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Burdur, Turkey

4 International Network on Personal Meaning, Toronto, ON, Canada

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The move to remote learning during COVID-19 has impacted billions of students. While research shows that school closure, and the pandemic more generally, has led to student distress, the possibility that these disruptions can also prompt growth in is a worthwhile question to investigate. The current study examined stress-related growth (SRG) in a sample of students returning to campus after a period of COVID-19 remote learning ( n = 404, age = 13–18). The degree to which well-being skills were taught at school (i.e., positive education) before the COVID-19 outbreak and student levels of SRG upon returning to campus was tested via structural equation modeling. Positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use in students were examined as mediators. The model provided a good fit [ χ 2 = 5.37, df = 3, p = 0.146, RMSEA = 0.044 (90% CI = 0.00–0.10), SRMR = 0.012, CFI = 99, TLI = 0.99] with 56% of the variance in SRG explained. Positive education explained 15% of the variance in cognitive reappraisal, 7% in emotional processing, and 16% in student strengths use during remote learning. The results are discussed using a positive education paradigm with implications for teaching well-being skills at school to foster growth through adversity and assist in times of crisis.

Introduction

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread rapidly across the globe in 2020, infecting more than 70 million people and causing more than 1.5 million deaths at the time of submitting this paper (December 8, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a ). The restrictions and disruptions stemming from this public health crisis have compromised the mental health of young people ( Hawke et al., 2020 ; UNICEF, 2020 ; Yeasmin et al., 2020 ; Zhou et al., 2020 ). A review assessing the mental health impact of COVID-19 on 6–21-year-olds ( n = 51 articles) found levels of depression and anxiety ranging between 11.78 and 47.85% across China, the United States of America, Europe, and South America ( Marques de Miranda et al., 2020 ). Researchers have also identified moderate levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in youth samples during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Guo et al., 2020 ; Liang et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2020 ).

Adolescence is a critical life stage for identity formation ( Allen and McKenzie, 2015 ; Crocetti, 2017 ) where teenagers strive for mastery and autonomy ( Featherman et al., 2019 ), individuate from their parents ( Levpuscek, 2006 ), and gravitate toward their peer groups to have their social and esteem needs met ( Allen and Loeb, 2015 ). The pandemic has drastically curtailed the conditions for teens to meet their developmental needs ( Loades et al., 2020 ). Gou et al. (2020 , p. 2) argue that adolescents are “more vulnerable than adults to mental health problems, in particular during a lockdown, because they are in a transition phase… with increasing importance of peers, and struggling with their often brittle self-esteem.”

In addition to the researching psychological distress arising from COVID-19, it is also important to identify positive outcomes that may arise through this pandemic. Dvorsky et al. (2020) caution that research focused only on distress may create a gap in knowledge about the resilience processes adopted by young people. In line with this, Bruining et al. (2020 , p. 1) advocate for research to keep “an open scientific mind” and include “positive hypotheses.” Waters et al. (2021) argue that researching distress during COVID-19 need not come at the expense of investigating how people can be strengthened through the pandemic. Hawke et al. (2020) , for example, found that more than 40% of their teen and early adult sample reported improved social relationships, greater self-reflection, and greater self-care.

Focusing on adolescents and adopting positive hypotheses , the current study will examine the degree to which a positive education intervention taught at school prior to the COVID-19 outbreak had an influence on three coping approaches during remote learning (i.e., positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use) and on student levels of stress-related growth (SRG) upon returning to school.

Can Adolescents Grow Through the COVID-19 Crisis? The Role of Positive Education

The calls for positive youth outcomes to be investigated during COVID-19 ( Bruining et al., 2020 ; Dvorsky et al., 2020 ; Waters et al., 2020 ) align with the field of positive education. Positive education is an applied science that weaves the research from positive psychology into schools following the principles of prevention-based psychology (e.g., teaching skills that enable students to prevent distress) and promotion-based psychology (e.g., teaching skills that enable students to build well-being; Slemp et al., 2017 ; Waters et al., 2017 ).

With the WHO focusing on student well-being as a top priority during the COVID-19 crisis ( World Health Organization, 2020b ), positive education is an essential research area. Burke and Arslan (2020 , p. 137) argue that COVID-19 could “become a springboard for positive change, especially in schools that draw on positive education research to …foster students’ social-emotional health.”

The field of positive education has developed a host of interventions that teach students the skills to support their mental health including mindfulness ( Waters et al., 2015 ), gratitude ( Froh et al., 2008 ), progressive relaxation ( Matsumoto and Smith, 2001 ), sense of belonging ( Allen and Kern, 2019 ) and, more specific to the current study, coping skills ( Collins et al., 2014 ; Frydenberg, 2020 ), cognitive reframing ( Sinclair, 2016 ), emotional management skills ( Brackett et al., 2012 ), and strengths use ( Quinlan et al., 2015 ). While prior research has shown that students can be successfully taught the skills to reduce ill-being and promote well-being, this research has been conducted predominantly with mainstream and at-risk students (for recent reviews, see Waters and Loton, 2019 ; Owens and Waters, 2020 ). Comparatively little research in positive education has been conducted with students who have experienced trauma ( Brunzell et al., 2019 ) yet, in the context of a global pandemic, the risks of trauma are amplified, hence is it worth considering the role of positive education in this context.

When it comes to trauma, a number of interventions have been developed based on cognitive behavioral principles (for example, see Little et al., 2011 ). These interventions teach students about trauma exposure and stress responses and then show students how to utilize skill such as relaxation, cognitive reframing, and social problem-solving skills to deal with PTSD symptoms ( Jaycox et al., 2010 ). Positive education ınterventions for trauma have been used with students who have experienced natural disasters, have been abused, have witnessed violence, or have been the victims of violent acts. These interventions have been shown to reduce depression, anxiety, and PTSD in students ( Stein et al., 2003 ; Cohen et al., 2006 ; National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2008 ; Walker, 2008 ; Jaycox et al., 2010 ).

The findings above, that positive education interventions help reduce the negative symptomology experienced by students in the aftermath of trauma begs the question as to whether these interventions can also promote positive changes following adversity. After first coining the term “ stress-related growth ,” Vaughn et al. (2009 , p. 131) defined it as the “experience of deriving benefits from encountering stressful circumstances” and asserted that SRG goes beyond merely a state of recovery following adversity. SRG also includes the development of a higher level of ongoing adaptive functioning. Those who experience SRG come out of the adversity stronger, with a deeper sense of meaning, new coping skills, broadened perspectives and newly developed personal resources ( Park and Fenster, 2004 ; Park, 2013 ).

In turning to see if positive education interventions can foster SRG, two studies were identified in the literature. Ullrich and Lutgendorf (2002) conducted a journaling intervention with undergraduate students (mean age = 20.05 years) who were asked to write about a stressful or traumatic event in their life twice a week for 1 month. Results showed that engaging in both emotion-based and cognitive-based reflection helped students see the adversity’s benefits and increase SRG. In Dolbier et al. (2010) study, college students (median age = 21 years) were placed in an intervention group or a waitlist control group. The intervention group participated in a 4-week resilience program that taught problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. At the end of the program, the intervention group showed more significant increases in SRG from pre- to post-test than the waitlist control group. The findings from these two studies suggest that positive education interventions can lead to SRG. However, given that both studies used college students, there remains a gap in researcher as to whether positive interventions can promote SRG for school-aged students. As such, the question remains, “Can positive education interventions help students grow from their experience of adversity?”

Cross-sectional and longitudinal findings from traumatology, coping psychology, and adolescent psychology have shown that young people can grow through adversity. Indeed, considerable research has shown the transformative capacity within young people to use aversive experiences as a platform for growth ( Levine et al., 2008 ; Meyerson et al., 2011 ). Children and teens have been found to grow following experiences such as severe illness (e.g., cancer; Currier et al., 2009 ), terrorist attacks ( Laufer, 2006 ), natural disasters (e.g., floods and earthquakes; Hafstad et al., 2010 ), death of a parent ( Wolchik et al., 2009 ), war ( Kimhi et al., 2010 ), abuse ( Ickovics et al., 2006 ), minority stress ( Vaughn et al., 2009 ), and even everyday stressors ( Mansfield and Diamond, 2017 ). These studies were not intervention-based but do provide consistent evidence that young people are capable of experiencing stress related growth. The findings above, showing that young people can use adversity as a springboard for growth, leads to our first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Adolescents will demonstrate stress-related growth during COVID-19.

The bulk of evidence for SRG in youth samples comes from cross-sectional or longitudinal research rather than intervention-based studies. While there has been intervention-based research working with school-aged students focusing on reducing PTSD, there has been none on promoting SRG. Moreover, the CBT interventions outlined above were run with students after the trauma had occurred. As there is no research looking at whether learning skills through a positive education intervention before a trauma influences the likelihood of SRG during or following a crisis. Drawing on the principle of promotion-based positive education, the current study seeks to explore whether teaching well-being skills to students before COVID-19 was significantly related to SRG during the global pandemic. Aligning with past research findings that the coping skills existing in individuals before a traumatic event are significant predictors of growth during and after trauma ( Park and Fenster, 2004 ; Prati and Pietrantoni, 2009 ; Zavala and Waters, 2020 ), hypothesis two is put forward:

Hypothesis 2: The degree to which students were taught positive education skills at school prior to the pandemic will be directly and positively related to their SRG upon school entry.

Coping Approaches in Remote Lockdown and SRG Upon School Re-entry

The possibility that the stressors of COVID-19 can trigger SRG in teenagers leads to the question of what factors might increase the chances of this growth. With reduced social contact during the pandemic, Wang et al. (2020 , p. 40) suggest that the development of intrapersonal skills are needed to optimize “psychological, emotional and behavioral adjustment.” Examples provided by Wang et al. (2020) include: (1) cognitive approaches that help students challenge unhelpful thoughts and (2) emotional approaches that give students the ability to express and handle their emotions. In research on everyday stressors with teenagers, Mansfield and Diamond (2017) found that cognitive-affective resources are significantly linked to SRG.

The coping factors examined in the current study were guided by the findings of Mansfield and Diamond (2017) together with the findings from college samples that cognitive reflection and emotional reflection ( Ullrich and Lutgendorf, 2002 ) as well as problem-focused and emotion-focused coping ( Dolbier et al., 2010 ) are significantly related to SRG. The recommendations of Wang et al. (2020) to investigate a student’s “psychological, emotional and behavioral adjustment” were also followed. The effect of three well-known coping skills during remote learning on SRG was examined: a cognitive skill (positive reappraisal), an emotional technique (emotional processing), and a behavioral skill – (strengths use).

Transitioning back to school, although a welcome move for many students, is still likely to be experienced as a source of distress ( Capurso et al., 2020 ). Re-entry requires a process of adjustment and a rupture of the “new-normal” routines that students had experienced with their families at home ( Pelaez and Novak, 2020 ). Some students may experience separation anxiety, others may be afraid of contracting the virus, and others may find the pace and noise of school unsettling ( Levinson et al., 2020 ; Pelaez and Novak, 2020 ). Even for those who adjust well, a “post-lockdown school” takes time and energy to get used to – wearing masks, lining up for daily temperature checks, washing hands upon entry into classrooms, and maintaining a 1.5-meter distance from their friends are foreign for most students and will require psycho-emotional processing ( Levinson et al., 2020 ). The better a student has coped during the period of remote learning (through positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use), the higher the chance they may have of growing through stress when they return to campus.

Positive Reappraisal

Positive reappraisal is a meaning-based, adaptive cognitive process that motivates an individual to consider whether a good outcome can emerge from a stressful experience ( Carver et al., 1989 ; Folkman and Moskowitz, 2000 ). Positively reappraising a stressful experience in ways that look for any beneficial outcomes ( Garland et al., 2011 ) has been shown to make people more aware of their values in life and to act upon those values ( Folkman and Moskowitz, 2000 ), thus, in doing so, it is linked to a deeper sense of meaning in life emerging from the stressor ( Rood et al., 2012a ). Positive reappraisal has been shown to reduce distress and improve mental health outcomes across various crises such as chronic illness, war, and rape ( Sears et al., 2003 ; Helgeson et al., 2006 ). Concerning the COVID-19 crisis, Xie et al. (2020) assert that an optimistic outlook may be critical. The reverse pattern has also been found in two student samples ( Liang et al., 2020 ; Ye et al., 2020 ) during the coronavirus crisis. Negative rumination (i.e., repeated negative thoughts about the virus) has been related to higher distress levels. Learning how to re-construct obstacles into opportunities during COVID-19 (e.g., “I miss seeing my teachers in person, but I am learning to be a more independent student”) can help young people to emerge from the crisis with new mindsets and skillsets. This logic leads to the third hypothesis of the current study:

Hypothesis 3: Higher use of positive reappraisal during remote learning will be significantly related to higher levels of stress-related growth when students return to school.

Emotional Processing

Emotional processing is described as the technique of actively processing and expressing one’s emotions during times of stress (in contrast to avoidance; Stanton et al., 2000 ). Emotional processing is a positive factor in helping children cope with and grow through adverse events such as grief ( McFerran et al., 2010 ), identity conflict ( Davis et al., 2015 ), and natural disasters ( Prinstein et al., 1996 ). To date, the role of emotional processing during a pandemic has not been explicitly studied; however, there is indirect research to suggest the value of this coping approach. For example, students in Chen et al. (2020) study who knew how to manage their stress levels displayed fewer symptoms of depression during COVID-19. Similarly, in Duan et al. (2020) study, emotion-focused coping during the coronavirus crisis was significantly related to anxiety levels in students from Grade 3 to Grade 12. These findings lead to Hypothesis four:

Hypothesis 4: Higher use of emotional processing techniques during remote learning will be significantly related to higher levels of stress-related growth when students return to school.

Strengths Use

The third coping factor to be examined in the current study is the skill of strengths use. Strengths are defined as positive capacities and characteristics that are energizing and authentic ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). Strengths use is described by Govindji and Linley (2007) as the extent to which individuals put their strengths into actions and draw upon their strengths in various settings. Shoshani and Slone (2016) showed that strengths have a moderating role in the relationship between political violence and PTSD for young people exposed to lengthy periods of war and political conflict. In an adult sample, strengths were found to enhance PTG in earthquake survivors ( Duan and Guo, 2015 ). In the current COVID-19 pandemic, Rashid and McGrath (2020 , p. 116) suggest that “using our strengths can enhance our immunity to stressors by building protective and pragmatic habits and actions.” Adding to this, research shows that strengths use leads to an increased sense of control/self-efficacy in young people ( Loton and Waters, 2018 ), which may be an important outcome to combat the “uncertainty distress” ( Freeston et al., 2020 ) that many young people are currently feeling ( Demkowicz et al., 2020 ). The research and reasoning outlined above about strengths use has been used to formulate Hypothesis five.

Hypothesis 5: Higher strengths use during remote learning will be significantly related to higher levels of stress-related growth when students return to school.

Having established that the three coping approaches above are likely to foster SRG during COVID-19, the final question remaining is whether positive education interventions can increase the use of these coping approaches. Garland et al. (2011) and Pogrebtsova et al. (2017) found that mindfulness interventions increase positive reappraisal. In a related outcome, positive education interventions have been shown to help students better understand their explanatory styles (i.e., how they interpret adversity; Quayle et al., 2001 ; Rooney et al., 2013 ). Adding to this, emotional processing is significantly enhanced in students due to undertaking various positive education interventions ( Qualter et al., 2007 ; Brackett et al., 2012 ; Castillo et al., 2013 ). Finally, positive education interventions have been shown to increase strengths use ( Marques et al., 2011 ; Quinlan et al., 2015 ; White and Waters, 2015 ). These findings inform our final two study hypotheses.

Hypothesis 6: The degree to which students were taught positive education skills at school prior to the pandemic will be directly and positively related to their use of positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use during remote learning.

Hypothesis 7: The degree to which students were taught positive education skills at school prior to the pandemic will be indirectly and positively related to SRG upon school entry via their use of positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use during remote learning.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

After receiving Ethics approval from the Human Ethics Research Committee at Monash University, data were collected from 404 students at a large independent school in New South Wales, Australia. Participants were recruited from Grades 7 to 12 and ranged in age from 11 to 18 ( M = 14.75, SD = 1.59; 50.2% female/46.8% male and 3% identified as non-/other gendered or declined to answer). The vast majority of the sample (93.1%) listed English as their primary language. Prior to conducting the survey, parents were sent information packages explaining the nature of the research, resources available to students feeling distress, security and anonymity of the data collected, and the opt-out process. Participation was voluntary and students could opt out at any time.

Students in the current study were part of a whole-school positive education intervention that focuses on six key pathways to well-being: strengths, emotional management, attention and awareness, relationships, coping, and habits and goals ( Waters, 2019 ; Waters and Loton, 2019 ). The first letter of each of these six pathways forms the acronym “SEARCH.” In 2019, all teachers at the school were trained in the “SEARCH” pathways and given activities to run in classrooms that help students learn skill that allow them to build up the six pathways of strengths (e.g., strengths pathways: strength surveys and strengths challenges), managing their emotions (e.g., learning how to label the full spectrum of emotions and identifying emotions through a mood-meter), focusing their attention (e.g., mindfulness), building their relationships (e.g., active-constructive responding), coping (e.g., cognitive reframing and breathing techniques), and building habits and setting goals (e.g., if-then intentions).

Positive Education

Students rated the degree to which they had been taught positive education skills at school prior to the COVID-19 pandemic along the six pathways of the SEARCH framework. Students rated the degree to which they had been taught how to use their strengths, manage their emotions, and build their capacity to have awareness and so on, prior to COVID-19. There was one item per SEARCH pathway (e.g., “Prior to COVID-19, to what degree did your school teach you about how to understand and manage your emotions?”). The alpha reliability for this scale was 0.91.

Students rated the degree to which they engaged in emotional processing techniques (“I took time to figure out what I was feeling,” “I thought about my feelings to get a thorough understanding of them,” etc.) during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown using the 4-item scale Emotional Processing Scale ( Stanton et al., 2000 ). Answers were given on a 4-point scale from “I didn’t do this at all” to “I did this a lot.” The internal reliability of the scale was α = 0.78.

Positive reappraisal was measured using the 4-item “Positive Reinterpretation and Growth Scale” of the COPE inventory ( Carver et al., 1989 ). Students were asked to rate the degree to which they engaged in positive reappraisal techniques (“I looked for something good in what was happening,” “I learned something from the experience,” etc.) during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Answers were given on a 4-point scale from “I didn’t do this at all” to “I did this a lot.” The internal reliability of the scale was α = 0.82.

Students rated the degree to which they used their strengths during the remote learning using an adapted three-item version of the Strengths Use Scale ( Govindji and Linley, 2007 ), a 14-item self-report scale designed to measure individual strengths use (e.g., items included “During remote learning and family lockdown I had lots of different ways to use my strengths,” “During remote learning and family lockdown I achieved what I wanted by using my strengths,” etc.). Answers were given on a 5-point scale from 1“Not at all” to 5 “A lot.” The internal reliability of the scale was α = 0.89.

Stress-Related Growth

Using an abbreviated Stress-Related Growth Scale ( Vaughn et al., 2009 ), students were asked to think about whether their experience with COVID-19 changed them in any specific ways, including internal growth (“I have learned to deal better with uncertainty,” “I learned not to let small hassles bother me the way they used to,” etc.) and social growth (“I reached out and helped others,” “I have learned to appreciate the strength of others who have had a difficult life,” etc.). Answers were given on a 5-point Likert scale from “Not at all” to “A lot.” The internal reliability of the scale was α = 0.85.

For students who elected to participate in this study, the school distributed the survey via an email link on the Qualtrics platform distributed by the teachers during the students’ mentor time. The first screen of the form provided information on the survey and reminded students that they could opt out or stop at any time. If distressed, several resources were made available, including teachers at the school, parents, and helplines. Teachers were present during the entire duration of the survey to provide clarification on instructions and/or support for students feeling distressed.

The data collected from the survey were anonymized and shared with the participating school administrators, and this was clearly stated to all participants of the study, including teachers, parents, and students. No personally identifiable information was made available in the data asset provided to the school. The original data source from the survey will be stored in a secure, password-protected file at Monash University for 5 years.

Through the survey, students were asked to reflect upon three different points in time: before school closures, during school closures, and after return to school. More specifically, students were asked to reflect on the positive education taught by their school prior to COVID-19. They were asked to reflect on what actions they took during COVID-19 lockdown to thrive cognitively (positive reappraisal), emotionally (emotional processing), and behaviorally (strengths use). And upon return to school, students were asked to reflect upon what they had learned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown (SRG).

Data Analysis

We carried out a two-step analytic approach to examine the association between positive education indicators and student levels of SRG upon returning back to campus during the COVID-19 outbreak. Observed scale characteristics were first performed to investigate descriptive statistics and the assumptions of analysis. Normality assumption was checked using kurtosis and skewness scores, with their cut points for the normality. Skewness <|2| and kurtosis scores <|7| suggest that the assumption of normality is met ( Curran et al., 1996 ; Kline, 2015 ). Pearson correlation was additionally used to examine the association between the variables of the study.

Following this, structural equation modeling was used to test the mediating effect of positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use during the period of remote learning in the association between positive education (i.e., the degree to which well-being skills were taught at school prior to the COVID-19 outbreak) and SRG upon returning back to campus. Common data-model fit statistics and squared multiple correlations ( R 2 ) were examined to evaluate the results of structural equation modeling. Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) and comparative fit index (CFI) scores between 0.90 and 0.95 indicate adequate model fit, whereas their scores ≥0.95 provide a good or close data-model fit. The root mean square error of approximation scores (RMSEA; with 90% confidence interval) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) between 0.05 and 0.08 are accepted as an adequate model fit, while those scores ≤0.05 indicate a close model fit ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ; Hooper et al., 2008 ; Kline, 2015 ). The results were also interrelated using the squared multiple correlations ( R 2 ) with: <0.13 = small, 0.13–0.26 = moderate, and ≥0.26 = large ( Cohen, 1988 ). All data analyses were performed using AMOS version 24 and SPSS version 25.

Observed Scale Characteristics and Inter-correlations

A check of observed scale characteristics showed that all measures in the study were relatively normally distributed, and that kurtosis and skewness scores ranged between −0.80 and 0.47 (see Table 1 ). As shown in Table 1 , correlation analysis found that teaching positive education prior to COVID-19 had positive correlations with the way students coped during remote learning (positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use) and with SRG when returning to campus. Additionally, positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use were moderately to largely, positively associated with SRG.

Descriptive statistics and correlation results.

Mediation Analyses

Several structural equation models were employed to analyze the mediating effect of positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use in the relationship between positive education and SRG. The first model, which was conducted to test the mediating role of emotional processing indicated good data-model fit statistics ( χ 2 = 1.20, df = 1, p = 0.273, RMSEA = 0.069 [90% CI for RMSEA: 0.00–0.13], SRMR = 0.010, CFI = 99, and TLI = 0.99). Standardized regression estimates revealed that positive education was a significant predictor of emotional processing and SRG. Moreover, emotional processing significantly predicted youths’ SRG. The indirect effect of positive education on SRG through emotional processing was significant, as seen in Table 2 . Positive education accounted for 7% of the variance in emotional processing, and positive education and emotional processing together explained 41% of the variance in SRG. These findings demonstrate the partial mediating effect of emotional processing on the link between positive education and student SRG upon returning to campus during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Standardized indirect effects.

Number of bootstrap samples for percentile bootstrap confidence intervals: 10,000 with 95% bias-corrected confidence interval.

The second model, which was conducted to test the mediating effect of positive reappraisal, indicated excellent data-model fit statistics ( χ 2 = 0.76, df = 1, p = 0.382, RMSEA = 0.00 [90% CI for RMSEA: 0.000–0.12], SRMR = 0.010, CFI = 1.00, and TLI = 1.00). Positive education had a significant predictive effect on positive reappraisal and SRG. Positive reappraisal also significantly predicted youths’ SRG. The indirect effect of positive education on SRG through positive reappraisal was significant, as seen in Table 2 . Positive education accounted for 15% of the variance in positive reappraisal, and positive education and positive reappraisal together explained 50% of the variance in SRG. Consequently, the findings of this model indicated the partial mediating effect of positive reappraisal in the relationship between positive education and student SRG.

The third model, which was carried out to examine the mediating effect of strengths use, indicated excellent data-model fit statistics ( χ 2 = 0.24, df = 1, p = 0.626, RMSEA = 0.00 [90% CI for RMSEA: 0.000–0.10], SRMR = 0.010, CFI = 1.00, and TLI = 1.00). Positive education significantly predicted strengths use and SRG. Strengths use also had a significant predictive effect on student SRG. The indirect effect of positive education on SRG through strengths use was significant, as seen in Table 2 . Positive education accounted for 16% of the variance in positive reappraisal, and positive education and strengths use together explained 40% of the variance in the SRG of youths. These results indicate the partial mediating effect of strengths on the association between positive education and student SRG.

The final and main model tested the mediating effects of emotional processing, positive reappraisal (see Figure 1 ), and strengths use yielded data-model fit statistics ( χ 2 = 5.37, df = 3, p = 0.146, RMSEA = 0.044 [90% CI = 0.00–0.10], SRMR = 0.012, CFI = 99, and TLI = 0.99). Standardized estimates showed that positive education had significant and positive predictive effect on emotional processing, positive reappraisal, strengths use, and SRG. Furthermore, SRG was significantly predicted by emotional processing, positive reappraisal, and strengths use. In this model, all variables together explained 56% of the variance in the SRG (before including mediators = 21%). The indirect effect of positive education on SRG through the mediators was significant, as shown in Table 2 . Taken together, the findings of this model demonstrate the partial mediating effect of emotional processing, positive reappraisal, and strengths use in the relationship between positive education and the SRG of students.

Structural equation model indicating the relationship between the variables of the study. ** p < 0.001.

As the COVID-19 global health disaster continues to unfold across the world, researchers are rushing to quantify adolescent psychological distress ( Marques de Miranda et al., 2020 ). Such investigation is important because children and teenagers have been identified as a particularly vulnerable group within our society during the pandemic ( Guo et al., 2020 ). Research into teen distress is crucial but it need not come at the expense of learning about the positive outcomes that young people might experience in a pandemic. In this time of global crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, studies investigating how young people can come out stronger is vitally important given the findings from earlier pandemics that psychopathology and PTSD can last for up to 3 years post the pandemic ( Sprang and Silman, 2013 ).

The current study adopted a positive education approach, specifically a promotion-based orientation, to explore a range of factors that increase a student’s likelihood of experiencing SRG. Previous research has shown that young people can, and do, grow through adverse experiences ( Salter and Stallard, 2004 ). This same finding was shown in the current study where the mean score for cognitive/affective growth (e.g., “I learned not to let small hassles bother me the way they used to”) was 2.57 + 1.2 out of 5 and the mean score for social growth (e.g., “I have learned to appreciate the strength of others who have had a difficult life”) was 2.96 + 1.3. These scores are higher than other youth samples who have experienced minority stress (cognitive/affective growth 2.30 + 0.65/social growth 2.45 + 0.63; Vaughn et al., 2009 ) and those who reported on everyday stressors (cognitive/affective growth 2.10 + 0.60/social growth 2.15 + 0.63; Mansfield and Diamond, 2017 ).

In addition to demonstrating that teenagers can experience growth during the global pandemic, this study also sought to explore the degree to which a set of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral coping skills used during remote learning could predict SRG upon school re-entry. All three coping skills significantly predicted the degree to which students reported they had grown through COVID-19. Positive reappraisal had the strongest effect, followed by strengths use and then emotional processing.

Positive reappraisal is a meaning-based, cognitive strategy that allows an individual to “attach a positive meaning to the event in terms of personal growth” ( Garnefski and Kraaij, 2014 , p. 1154). This cognitive coping skill has been shown to be an adaptive way to help teenagers deal with a range of distressing situations, including being bullied ( Garnefski and Kraaij, 2014 ) and coping with loss, health threats, and relational stress ( Garnefski et al., 2003 ). Interestingly, Garnefski et al. (2002) found that adolescents did not use positive reappraisal as frequently as adults, suggesting that this is a skill that is worth teaching in the positive education curriculum in the future. To this end, Rood et al. (2012b , p. 83) explored whether positive reappraisal could be experimentally induced in teenagers and found that it could by asking them to think of stressful event in their lives and then “try to think about the positive side effects of the stressful event. Examine what you have learned, and how it has made you stronger.” Moreover, Rood et al. (2012b) found that of the four cognitive coping skills induced in teenagers (rumination, distancing, positive reappraisal, and acceptance), it was positive reappraisal that had the largest impact on well-being.

The degree to which students reported using their strengths during remote learning was also significantly, positively related to the amount of SRG they reported once back on campus. Strengths use has been positively associated with a host of well-being indicators for adolescents during mainstream times (i.e., non-crisis times) including life satisfaction ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), subjective well-being ( Jach et al., 2018 ), and hope ( Marques et al., 2011 ). In the context of adversity, strengths have also been shown to assist coping. For example, Shoshani and Slone (2016) found that strengths were inversely related to psychiatric symptoms and PTSD in teenagers experiencing war and political violence. In times of natural disaster, Southwick et al. (2016) argued that strengths help young people deal with the crisis adaptively and find solutions for the obstacles. In the COVID-19 pandemic, Bono et al. (2020) found that the strengths of grit and gratitude fostered resilience and impacted grades in university students. Our study found that strengths use was a significant predictor of the degree to which teenagers experienced SRG, suggesting that teaching students to identify and use their strengths will be beneficial in preparing them to grow through the current pandemic and in future times of adversity.

The third coping skill tested in this study was that of emotional processing, which is characterized by the conscious way a person acknowledges and handles intense emotions that come along with a distressing event or experience ( Stanton and Cameron, 2000 ). Park et al. (1996) found that seeking emotional support from others and venting one’s emotions were significantly related to SRG in university students. The intensity, uncertainty, and fear surrounding the global pandemic has triggered youth depression and anxiety ( Ellis et al., 2020 ) as well as heightened the experience of many, sub-clinical, negative emotions such as loneliness, frustration, anger, and hopelessness ( Garbe et al., 2020 ; Horita et al., 2021 ). With this in mind, it is easy to see why it is important for students to have the skills to adaptively work through their emotions each day. The degree to which students identified, validated, and expressed, their emotions was a significant predictor of SRG in the current study.

The positive education intervention tested in this study was a factor that significantly predicted the use of the three coping skills during remote learning. More specifically, the more that students reported they had been taught the skills for increasing their levels of “SEARCH” (strengths, emotional management, attention and awareness, relationships, coping, and habits and goals; Waters, 2019 ; Waters and Loton, 2019 ), the more they were likely to utilize adaptive coping skills during remote learning. The positive education intervention in this study predicted 15% of the variance in positive reappraisal, 7% of the variance in emotional processing, and 16% of the variance in strengths use. Additionally, the positive education intervention had an indirect effect on SRG through its impact on the three coping skills. The degree to which students felt they had learnt well-being skills prior to COVID-19 explained 21% of SRG (before including mediators) and 56% of the variance when including the three coping skills. In non-pandemic periods, positive education interventions have been shown to promote coping skills and well-being in students. The current study shows the value of positive education interventions during times of crisis suggesting that this field plays an important role in preparedness and prevention for future challenges ( Almazan et al., 2018 , 2019 ; Mohammadinia et al., 2019 ).

The role of positive education interventions for a student’s ability to grow from the adversity created by COVID-19 has important implications for schools moving forward in the pandemic. At the time of writing this paper, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and parts of Europe have all announced a second wave of lockdown ( Khan et al., 2020 ; Kupferschmidt, 2020 ; Once more with dread, 2020 ) and many schools are moving back into remote learning, with no certainty as to when students will be back on campus. Schools, through a positive education approach, can help students to enhance their psychological immunity and psychological flexibility to this virus in order to cope with the multiple stages of the pandemic they are cycling through ( Arslan et al., 2020 ; Arslan and Allen, 2021 ). Positive education interventions equip students with the vital skills that enable them to build healthy relationships with others – crucial for building social support networks, strong student-teacher alliances ( Allen et al., in press ), and fostering a sense of belonging to their school ( Frydenberg et al., 2012 ; Allen et al., 2017 , 2018 , 2019 ). Given the challenges of social connection occurring during the pandemic, and especially during remote learning, these skills are vital to retain that sense of social connection needed by teens.

Capurso et al. (2020 , p. 66) assert that it is important for schools “to instigate a sense-making process in children by providing an arena where they can process critical events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic at both an emotional and a cognitive level, thereby building up their resilience and minimize the risk of long-lasting trauma.” Several other authors have also called for the need for school-family/school-community partnerships to build “resilient systems” around young people during times of crisis ( Prinstein et al., 1996 ; Brock and Jimerson, 2004 ; Masten and Motti-Stefanidi, 2020 ). Dvorsky et al. (2020 , p. 1) call for “school-wide wellness supports” that promote “adaptive coping and resilience-promoting processes.” Findings from the current study suggest that teaching students how to engage in positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use will increase their chances of growing through the stress they are experiencing.

The coping skills tested in this study could be seen to provide a “psychological formula” to help students validate the negatives (e.g., through emotional processing) and identify the positives (e.g., through positive reappraisal). Striking the balance between owning the pain and seeing the positives was a key factor in adversarial growth experienced by SARS patients ( Cheng et al., 2006 ). Adding strengths use to positive reappraisal and emotional processing provides the action element to round out a “cognitive-emotion-behavioral approach” recommended by Wang et al. (2020) and helps students to use their strengths to regain a sense of agency in a time of uncertainty. According to Rashid and McGrath (2020 , p. 119), focusing on strengths makes the negative “less powerful” and “reminds us that we have our personal strengths that can carry us through the crisis.”

Limitations

The results of this study must be considered within its limitations. First, the sample was obtained from only one school which was an independent grammar school in Australia (predominantly English speaking). This may limit the generalizability of the findings for students who attend schools from other sectors such as public/Government schools or other faith-based schools and for students in non-WEIRD 1 contexts. Second, the retrospective design means there is potential that the results were influenced by recall bias. Students were asked to complete a single survey recalling two previous time points (prior to the onset of the pandemic, during remote learning) and their SRG in the current return to campus. It is possible that some students either underrated or overrated the degree to which they learned positive education. Under ideal circumstances, student ratings of the skills they were learning through the positive education would have been collected prior to the pandemic; however, because the COVID-19 pandemic was not anticipated, the current design relied on retrospective recall.

Another consideration is the long-term duration of COVID-19 itself. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues through the time of writing this paper (December 2020), and is expected to go on for some time longer, the lasting effects of the pandemic may impact the nature of SRG experienced in students. The role that the duration of this crises plays on SRG is currently unknown, which means that there is benefit in exploring whether SRG grows, stalls, or reverses as the pandemic continues.

To assist adolescents during COVID-19, researchers need to provide a comprehensive and well-rounded understanding of their experiences. The addition of positive education science to the current COVID-19 research helps to provide researchers, teachers, and school psychologists with a deeper understanding of the factors that promote internal resources, strengths, and positive outcomes for teens.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee. Implied consent was used and approved meaning that written informed consent from the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

LW led the research, conceptualized the study, led the study design, sourced the bulk of the research measures, recruited the research site school, and wrote the abstract, introduction, discussion, and references. K-AA led the Ethics approval process, sourced some of the research measures, and wrote the materials and methods and limitations. GA sourced some of the research measures, led the statistical analysis, and wrote the results section. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic.

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9 Students Share How They Really Feel About Going Back to School

These students, plus one parent, open up about the wave of emotions that comes with starting a school year unlike any other we've experienced before..

Madeleine Burry

Jessica Fregni

Writer-Editor, One Day

Laura Zingg

Editorial Project Manager, One Day Studio

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the country, students, families, and teachers are navigating the new normal of going back to school—while much of the country still shelters in place.

Some students are preparing for a return to remote learning. Others are still unsure of how exactly they will be attending school this year.

We spoke with a few students and their family members from different schools around the country to learn what school will look like for them this fall. They shared their personal experiences with remote learning and how they feel about going back to school in the middle of a pandemic.

Missing Everything About School

‘i just carry on about my day with no specific emotion’.

Syedah Asghar, College Sophomore, Washington, D.C.

Syedah Asghar will begin her second year of college at American University in Washington, D.C., where she studies public relations and strategic communications. After receiving some mixed messages over the summer about the status of her school reopening, Syedah recently learned that her school’s campus will remain closed for the fall semester. She plans to attend remote classes in a few weeks. And like many college students, she is grappling with staying motivated and missing out on the college experience.

College has been a safe space where I’m the most “me.” I would wake up much happier. I had confidence in my routine, and I was surrounded by friends who made me feel excited to start the day. With online learning, I just carry on about my day with no specific emotion. 

The hardest part about attending college remotely is maintaining a routine and motivation. For in-person classes, I would get dressed and have to physically be present which put a start to my day. Now, I sometimes turn on my computer as soon as I wake up and not give myself the mental space ahead of time to start my day. On the plus side, with online learning, there is a lot more flexibility in my schedule since I’m able to complete an assignment on my own timeframe. Most of my professors are honoring mental health, and are more understanding of external factors that impact the quality of education now that we're learning remotely.

Being part of the Enduring Ideas Fellowship has kept me busy working 20 hours a week. I’m also trying to get creative by learning how to cook and attempting new recipes. With my friends, we’ve all been checking-in and making sure we’re able to support one another through these mentally-draining times. Only two of my professors have reached out and asked how we’re doing, so there isn’t much support on that end. 

While it can be mentally challenging and exhausting, I’m very fortunate to have access to technology and internet connection so I can complete my coursework. And I’m able to stay at home and quarantine if need be.

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‘I'm Hoping That Jose Goes Back, Even Though I Know It's Scary’

Marisol Escobedo & Jose Manrrique, 4th grade, Kansas City, Missouri

Fourth-grade student  Jose Manrrique is returning to school at Carver Dual Language in Kansas City, Missouri, in September—virtually, for now. Schools in the Kansas City Public School System will not reopen for in-person instruction until the community’s COVID-19 cases decrease for at least 14 days. While Jose eagerly awaits the day when he can return to the classroom and see his teachers and friends again, his mother, Marisol Escobedo, feels much more conflicted.

Marisol: They're going to be starting online school first, on September 8th. They will do that for a couple of months while the cases keep decreasing, then they will start putting some of the kids back in school. I'm hoping that Jose goes back, even though I know it's scary at the same time for him to go. I'm really worried that he will get sick. I don't want to go through that, it scares me. But I really would like Jose to be able to develop his learning so that he can learn what he's supposed to in school. 

I don't really think that Jose learned much from online classes. Even though I know that the teachers do their best to teach them as much as they can, I don't think it's the same for the kids. 

Especially the younger ages, I think that it's hard for them to be able to teach them everything on a computer—especially because you have multiple children at the same time in the class. For an older student, like my sister, I know that she did really good because she's older. She's 16 and she already knows what she's doing. But for Jose, it was hard.

I'm hoping that they will make the school safe for students, to try to keep them as healthy as they can. I don't know what that process will be, but I'm hoping that everything that they do, they will plan it well. 

Jose:   I want to go back in the school building. I'm hoping that I can still play with my friends and also be in the same class with my friends.

Adapting to a New Normal

‘i have to push myself to get things done’.

Haanya Ijaz, 12th Grade, Dublin, Ohio

Haanya Ijaz is a rising senior at Hilliard Davidson, in Dublin, Ohio where she will be attending remote classes in the fall. She’s also taking classes at Ohio State University, which will be solely online. While she finds in-person classes more interesting and also values the face-to-face time with friends, she knows online learning is safer, and also allows her to independently create a schedule that works for her.

Online classes are definitely a lot more organized this fall than before.

I also think I've gained skills with handling procrastination and sticking to a schedule, so I should be more organized this fall. [The hardest part about online learning is] staying interested and motivated. Without sticking to a schedule, I easily fall into a cycle of procrastination and feeling down, so I have to push myself to get things done and stay on top of my responsibilities. 

Most of my classes should be done before 4 p.m., leaving me room to work on college apps and extracurriculars in the afternoon along with homework. 

I also think I'll have more time for my personal hobbies and interests which have always been something that give me a break outside of academics and keep my mental health in check. I read a lot! I also sketch landscapes, my friends, and characters from my favorite shows. Recently I've gotten back into skateboarding after a one-year-long hiatus, which has been great.

[I feel worried about] college applications and the situation with the state-administered SAT. It's still very gray. [I’m hopeful about my] self-growth and exploration with this extra time at home! I am also looking forward to the remote internship opportunities I will be participating in this fall. 

I would obviously love it if COVID-19 did not exist, but within the current parameters of the situation I'm excited for the courses I am taking and the extracurriculars I am involved in. I also have a huge list of books I need to get through, so staying at home is going to be great for that!

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Nothing Feels Normal Anymore

‘I Walked Out of My High School for the Last Time Without Knowing It’

Becoming a Teacher During the Pandemic

‘I’m Feeling Hopeful About My Ability to Sit in on More Online Classes’

Annabel Morley, 12th Grade, Baltimore, Maryland

Annabel Morley is a rising senior at the Baltimore School of Arts. At least the beginning of Annabel’s final year of high school will be spent at home, where she will be learning remotely. Although Annabel worries about how engaging and supportive online learning will be this year, she’s found a silver lining: More time at home means that she has more time for her artistic pursuits which include writing for CHARM , an online literary magazine that amplifies voices of Baltimore youth and spending time with her family.

I’m not really sure yet what my school day will look like, but I know it will be entirely online. I definitely don’t think I would feel very safe going back to school in person unless CDC guidelines were followed really well. Both my parents are at risk and I wouldn’t want to put them, or my friends’ families, at risk.

The hardest part of attending school remotely is definitely not seeing any of my school friends in person and having some difficulty understanding the content. We have a lot less academic support. I’m most worried about understanding what's going on in my classes—especially in math. I hope that we can find a way for online schooling to be more engaging because it was very difficult to understand or stay focused on a class last spring. 

Now that school is online, I definitely have more time to work on personal projects and interests. For example, I’ve started crocheting and oil painting, and have made a bunch of clothes. During quarantine, I've mainly been doing lots of crafts and baking, Facetiming, and having safe outdoor hangouts with my friends.

My mom and I are really close so it's been nice to be able to spend more time with her, and with all the Facetiming with my friends, I feel like I’ve been really loved and supported during this time. I’m feeling hopeful about my ability to sit in on more online classes and teach myself artistic and personal skills.

‘Honestly, I Would Prefer Learning in a Virtual Setting’

Amia Roach-Valandra, 12th Grade, Rosebud, South Dakota

Amia Roach-Valandra will begin her senior year of high school this fall on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She is also an Enduring Ideas fellow, a student-led leadership initiative to reimagine the future of education. Amia's school will be online during the first quarter, with plans to reevaluate whether to open for in-person classes. Like many students and families, Amia is feeling anxious not knowing what lies ahead.

In this new school year, we are faced with challenges that we never had to face before. My high school reached a decision to go online for the first quarter and have a revaluation in nine weeks. As a student I feel in the dark about the decision that is being made, and anxious about it. If the school isn’t prepared yet, how do they expect students to be prepared? 

Not having a normal school setting may not allow me to be the best student I can be. I’ll have the safety of my health top of mind instead of learning the curriculum. Honestly, I would prefer learning in a virtual setting, and being able to learn from the comfort of my own home. I know I would be able to stay on top of assignments, although I know some students may not feel the same. 

I am also a student-athlete, and I am worried about my school's plan regarding sports. It is definitely a piece of my life that I would want to go back to normal, yet I want to be considerate of my health as well as others. A lot of students depend on sports as a place to escape for a while, and others depend on sports scholarships for college. I am also thinking about those students and how much that will impact them this school year.

‘My Overall Mental and Physical Health Improved Significantly’

Tehle Ross, 10th Grade, Baltimore, Maryland

Tehle Ross is a rising sophomore attending Baltimore City College and a contributor for CHARM , a digital magazine featuring voices of Baltimore youth. She loves studying history and plans to study abroad this year in Italy, a country that has made a remarkable recovery through the pandemic. Her Italian school will be a hybrid of online and in-person at the beginning of the year and Tehle is optimistic about transitioning to all in-person classes.

Attending school remotely has several benefits and shortcomings alike. Each family's living and working situation is different; however, in my personal experience, I noticed that my overall mental and physical health improved significantly when doing school online. I was less stressed because I was able to space out my work as I desired, and I also was able to complete every assignment from the comfort of my own home. Attending school remotely stunted my academic progress, though, I believe, for I am a more focused student when instruction takes place in the classroom with my peers.

The hardest part of attending school remotely was the social isolation from my classmates and teachers. At school, you always feel like you have a community around you, and it is tough to not feel that same sense of community when learning online at home. Additionally, it takes an innate sense of motivation to get assignments done in a timely manner when you are doing work online.

Quarantine has been tough for us all, but I cope and stay busy by doing what makes me happy. I have developed a passion for baking, and I have also been an avid reader and writer. Having game nights with my family and watching movies together lifts my spirits.

My community has been supporting me during this time by checking up on me and staying in touch virtually. Supporting others during this time means prioritizing their safety.

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Worries and Hopes About the Next Chapter

‘this pandemic is serious, but people have stopped taking it seriously’.

Shubhan Bhat, 11th Grade, Baltimore, Maryland

Shubhan Bhat will also begin 11th grade this fall at The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. He enjoys poetry, writing for CHARM  magazine, and studying American government. His school will hold online classes this fall and possibly offer a hybrid option later on. Shubhan prefers remote learning because it’s less stressful and safer for students. But being at home while trying to learn has also been very difficult for Shubhan and his family. 

With remote learning, I gained more time to finish my work, had less stress, and more free time. What is lost is the social aspect of the classes, which is fine with me. I’m hopeful that online classes will be safer than an in-person school and there will be less work.

The hardest part about attending school remotely is being in the house when events happen. I was in my English class when the paramedics came to my house to try and revive my grandfather. I watched my grandfather die right in the middle of class. At that point, because my maternal grandfather also died a month ago, I lost all my motivation to be in class or do work. I left class, and haven’t come back since.

I’ve been getting support through classes and therapy. My family tries to work together on activities so I won’t be depressed during quarantine. My teachers also made my classes optional last spring so that decreased my stress. I don’t really have a lot of friends or go on social media as much as I used to. It used to entertain me, but it’s starting to get boring.

I wish schools in Texas and Florida wouldn't be in-person. I find that in-person classes during the pandemic aren't safe because students are going out in public and have a greater risk of spreading COVID. This pandemic is serious, but people have stopped taking it seriously. And now there is an increase in cases.

‘I Fear All of My College Plans Will Go Out the Window’

Me’Shiah Bell, 11th Grade, Baltimore Maryland

Me’Shiah Bell is a rising 11th grader at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, where students will continue to receive remote instruction this fall. While Me’Shiah believes that remote learning is the best and safest option for now, she worries about what remote learning will mean for her college plans—especially since she’s entering her junior year, a critical time for college admissions. In her free time, Me’Shiah also writes for CHARM online magazine.

I think remote learning is the best option, as it is the safest. However, I think there are quite a few downsides. 

I miss the social interactions, but I realize that it’s unimportant in the long run. The main downside for me is the lack of clarity and communication between the students and teachers. For example, last spring I had a grading error that would have been fixed immediately if I was physically at school. However, since I wasn’t there, there was no sense of urgency, and my concern was disregarded by multiple adults. This caused the situation to be pushed over for much longer than it should’ve been. 

Hopefully, this fall we’ll have a better system to avoid issues like this. I also hope classes will be scheduled like a typical school day, with multiple sessions in a row, and independent work to do between classes. Last spring, teachers could decide if and when classes sessions were held, and everything was very unorganized. Sometimes, the sessions would overlap with other responsibilities I had. 

The hardest part of remote learning has been keeping myself motivated and holding myself accountable. I’m going into my junior year, which is probably the most important year for college admissions, and I don’t feel like I’m able to put my best foot forward. I’ve worked hard to get to the point I’m at now, and I fear that all of my college plans will go out of the window due to circumstances out of my control.

Overall, I’m worried about how prepared I am mentally to adjust to such a huge change, while still continuing to perform well academically. I’m hopeful that my school will be more prepared to accommodate all of our needs so that everyone can have the best possible experience.

‘I Think COVID Gave Me a New Story to Tell the Next Generation’

Rosalie Bobbett, 12th Grade, Brooklyn, New York

This August, Rosalie Bobbett will begin her senior year at Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy (BELA). The first three weeks of school will be held online, after which she will alternate one week of in-person classes and one week of remote learning. Rosalie lives with her parents, siblings, grandmother, and uncle so she’s been extra cautious about quarantining. Going back to in-person classes will be a big adjustment. But she’s ready.

My school is really on top of safety. They're going to make us wear masks. And we have to get a COVID test before we enter the school building. For in-person classes, we're going to stay in one room with 12 other people. The teachers have to rotate to us instead of us traveling in a big group. 

I think with online learning, it gives me an opportunity to move at my own pace and take accountability for my learning. The disadvantages are the lack of talking to people and being in the classroom. I'm very fortunate to be in a school where I have a computer. I know how to work Zoom. I know how to work from Microsoft. Most of my peers don’t even have a computer. And so I'm wondering—how are those students navigating this world right now?

I feel like a lot of students are going to be left behind because of resources or their parents—there might be other children in the home and it's going to be difficult for them to take care of their siblings. The teachers and principals and people who are responsible for their education—I don't want them to lose sight of that child who is behind the screen.

I’m excited about school. It's my senior year. This is the last chapter before entering my adulthood. I think COVID gave me a new story to tell the next generation. It's going to be a lot of mixed emotions, but I know my teachers are going to make my senior year the best that they can.

More Community Voices

“ COVID-19: Community Voices ” offers a glimpse of life and learning during the coronavirus school closures, in the words of students and parents in the communities we serve.

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

In the meantime, happy writing!

Journaling is well-known as a therapeutic practice , a tool for helping you organize your thoughts and vent your emotions, especially in anxiety-ridden times. But keeping a diary has an added benefit during a pandemic: It may help educate future generations.

In “ The Quarantine Diaries ,” Amelia Nierenberg spoke to Ady, an 8-year-old in the Bay Area who is keeping a diary. Ms. Nierenberg writes:

As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic. Their diaries are told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause. “You can say anything you want, no matter what, and nobody can judge you,” Ady said in a phone interview earlier this month, speaking about her diary. “No one says, ‘scaredy-cat.’” When future historians look to write the story of life during coronavirus, these first-person accounts may prove useful. “Diaries and correspondences are a gold standard,” said Jane Kamensky, a professor of American History at Harvard University and the faculty director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. “They’re among the best evidence we have of people’s inner worlds.”

You can keep your own journal, recording your thoughts, questions, concerns and experiences of living through the coronavirus pandemic.

Not sure what to write about? Read the rest of Ms. Nierenberg’s article to find out what others around the world are recording. If you need more inspiration, here are a few writing prompts to get you started:

How has the virus disrupted your daily life? What are you missing? School, sports, competitions, extracurricular activities, social plans, vacations or anything else?

What effect has this crisis had on your own mental and emotional health?

What changes, big or small, are you noticing in the world around you?

For more ideas, see our writing prompts . We post a new one every school day, many of them now related to life during the coronavirus.

You can write in your journal every day or as often as you like. And if writing isn’t working for you right now, try a visual, audio or video diary instead.

2. Personal Narrative

As you write in your journal, you’ll probably find that your life during the pandemic is full of stories, whether serious or funny, angry or sad. If you’re so inspired, try writing about one of your experiences in a personal narrative essay.

Here’s how Mary Laura Philpott begins her essay, “ This Togetherness Is Temporary, ” about being quarantined with her teenage children:

Get this: A couple of months ago, I quit my job in order to be home more. Go ahead and laugh at the timing. I know. At the time, it was hitting me that my daughter starts high school in the fall, and my son will be a senior. Increasingly they were spending their time away from me at school, with friends, and in the many time-intensive activities that make up teenage lives. I could feel the clock ticking, and I wanted to spend the minutes I could — the minutes they were willing to give me, anyway — with them, instead of sitting in front of a computer at night and on weekends in order to juggle a job as a bookseller, a part-time gig as a television host, and a book deadline. I wanted more of them while they were still living in my house. Now here we are, all together, every day. You’re supposed to be careful what you wish for, but come on. None of us saw this coming.

Personal narratives are short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences, big or small. Read the rest of Ms. Philpott’s essay to see how she balances telling the story of a specific moment in time and reflecting on what it all means in the larger context of her life.

To help you identify the moments that have been particularly meaningful, difficult, comical or strange during this pandemic, try responding to one of our writing prompts related to the coronavirus:

Holidays and Birthdays Are Moments to Come Together. How Are You Adapting During the Pandemic?

Has Your School Switched to Remote Learning? How Is It Going So Far?

Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Bringing Your Extended Family Closer Together?

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

Another option? Use any of the images in our Picture Prompt series to inspire you to write about a memory from your life.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 1: Teach Narrative Writing With The New York Times

People have long turned to creative expression in times of crisis. During the coronavirus pandemic, artists are continuing to illustrate , play music , dance , perform — and write poetry .

That’s what Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, an emergency room doctor in Boston, did after a long shift treating coronavirus patients. Called “ The Apocalypse ,” her poem begins like this:

This is the apocalypse A daffodil has poked its head up from the dirt and opened sunny arms to bluer skies yet I am filled with dark and anxious dread as theaters close as travel ends and grocery stores display their empty rows where toilet paper liquid bleach and bags of flour stood in upright ranks.

Read the rest of Dr. Mitchell’s poem and note the lines, images and metaphors that speak to you. Then, tap into your creative side by writing a poem inspired by your own experience of the pandemic.

Need inspiration? Try writing a poem in response to one of our Picture Prompts . Or, you can create a found poem using an article from The Times’s coronavirus outbreak coverage . If you have access to the print paper, try making a blackout poem instead.

Related Resources: 24 Ways to Teach and Learn About Poetry With The New York Times Reader Idea | How the Found Poem Can Inspire Teachers and Students Alike

4. Letter to the Editor

Have you been keeping up with the news about the coronavirus? What is your reaction to it?

Make your voice heard by writing a letter to the editor about a recent Times article, editorial, column or Opinion essay related to the pandemic. You can find articles in The Times’s free coronavirus coverage or The Learning Network’s coronavirus resources for students . And, if you’re a high school student, your school can get you free digital access to The New York Times from now until July 6.

To see examples, read the letters written by young people in response to recent headlines in “ How the Young Deal With the Coronavirus .” Here’s what Addie Muller from San Jose, Calif., had to say about the Opinion essay “ I’m 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital ”:

As a high school student and a part of Generation Z, I’ve been less concerned about getting Covid-19 and more concerned about spreading it to more vulnerable populations. While I’ve been staying at home and sheltering in place (as was ordered for the state of California), many of my friends haven’t been doing the same. I know people who continue going to restaurants and have been treating the change in education as an extended spring break and excuse to spend more time with friends. I fear for my grandparents and parents, but this article showed me that we should also fear for ourselves. I appreciated seeing this article because many younger people seem to feel invincible. The fact that a healthy 26-year-old can be hospitalized means that we are all capable of getting the virus ourselves and spreading it to others. I hope that Ms. Lowenstein continues spreading her story and that she makes a full recovery soon.

As you read, note some of the defining features of a letter to the editor and what made these good enough to publish. For more advice, see these tips from Thomas Feyer, the letters editor at The Times, about how to write a compelling letter. They include:

Write briefly and to the point.

Be prepared to back up your facts with evidence.

Write about something off the beaten path.

Publishing Opportunity: When you’re ready, submit your letter to The New York Times.

5. Editorial

Maybe you have more to say than you can fit in a 150-word letter to the editor. If that’s the case, try writing an editorial about something you have a strong opinion about related to the coronavirus. What have you seen that has made you upset? Proud? Appreciative? Scared?

In “ Surviving Coronavirus as a Broke College Student ,” Sydney Goins, a senior English major at the University of Georgia, writes about the limited options for students whose colleges are now closed. Her essay begins:

College was supposed to be my ticket to financial security. My parents were the first ones to go to college in their family. My grandpa said to my mom, “You need to go to college, so you don’t have to depend on a man for money.” This same mentality was passed on to me as well. I had enough money to last until May— $1,625 to be exact — until the coronavirus ruined my finances. My mom works in human resources. My dad is a project manager for a mattress company. I worked part time at the university’s most popular dining hall and lived in a cramped house with three other students. I don’t have a car. I either walked or biked a mile to attend class. I have student debt and started paying the accrued interest last month. I was making it work until the coronavirus shut down my college town. At first, spring break was extended by two weeks with the assumption that campus would open again in late March, but a few hours after that email, all 26 colleges in the University System of Georgia canceled in-person classes and closed integral parts of campus.

Read the rest of Ms. Goins’s essay. What is her argument? How does she support it? How is it relevant to her life and the world?

Then, choose a topic related to the pandemic that you care about and write an editorial that asserts an opinion and backs it up with solid reasoning and evidence.

Not sure where to start? Try responding to some of our recent argumentative writing prompts and see what comes up for you. Here are a few we’ve asked students so far:

Should Schools Change How They Grade Students During the Pandemic?

What Role Should Celebrities Have During the Coronavirus Crisis?

Is It Immoral to Increase the Price of Goods During a Crisis?

Or, consider essential questions about the pandemic and what they tell us about our world today: What weaknesses is the coronavirus exposing in our society? How can we best help our communities right now? What lessons can we learn from this crisis? See more here.

As an alternative to a written essay, you might try creating a video Op-Ed instead, like Katherine Oung’s “ Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School. ”

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your final essay to our Student Editorial Contest , open to middle school and high school students ages 10-19, until April 21. Please be sure to read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: An Argumentative-Writing Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning

Are games, television, music, books, art or movies providing you with a much-needed distraction during the pandemic? What has been working for you that you would recommend to others? Or, what would you caution others to stay away from right now?

Share your opinions by writing a review of a piece of art or culture for other teenagers who are stuck at home. You might suggest TV shows, novels, podcasts, video games, recipes or anything else. Or, try something made especially for the coronavirus era, like a virtual architecture tour , concert or safari .

As a mentor text, read Laura Cappelle’s review of French theater companies that have rushed to put content online during the coronavirus outbreak, noting how she tailors her commentary to our current reality:

The 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote: “The sole cause of people’s unhappiness is that they do not know how to stay quietly in their rooms.” Yet at a time when much of the world has been forced to hunker down, French theater-makers are fighting to fill the void by making noise online.

She continues:

Under the circumstances, it would be churlish to complain about artists’ desire to connect with audiences in some fashion. Theater, which depends on crowds gathering to watch performers at close quarters, is experiencing significant loss and upheaval, with many stagings either delayed indefinitely or canceled outright. But a sampling of stopgap offerings often left me underwhelmed.

To get inspired you might start by responding to our related Student Opinion prompt with your recommendations. Then turn one of them into a formal review.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 2: Analyzing Arts, Criticizing Culture: Writing Reviews With The New York Times

7. How-to Guide

Being stuck at home with nowhere to go is the perfect time to learn a new skill. What are you an expert at that you can you teach someone?

The Times has created several guides that walk readers through how to do something step-by-step, for example, this eight-step tutorial on how to make a face mask . Read through the guide, noting how the author breaks down each step into an easily digestible action, as well as how the illustrations support comprehension.

Then, create your own how-to guide for something you could teach someone to do during the pandemic. Maybe it’s a recipe you’ve perfected, a solo sport you’ve been practicing, or a FaceTime tutorial for someone who’s never video chatted before.

Whatever you choose, make sure to write clearly so anyone anywhere could try out this new skill. As an added challenge, include an illustration, photo, or audio or video clip with each step to support the reader’s understanding.

Related Resource: Writing Curriculum | Unit 4: Informational Writing

8. 36 Hours Column

For nearly two decades, The Times has published a weekly 36 Hours column , giving readers suggestions for how to spend a weekend in cities all over the globe.

While traveling for fun is not an option now, the Travel section decided to create a special reader-generated column of how to spend a weekend in the midst of a global pandemic. The result? “ 36 Hours in … Wherever You Are .” Here’s how readers suggest spending a Sunday morning:

8 a.m. Changing routines Make small discoveries. To stretch my legs during the lockdown, I’ve been walking around the block every day, and I’ve started to notice details that I’d never seen before. Like the fake, painted window on the building across the road, or the old candle holders that were once used as part of the street lighting. When the quarantine ends, I hope we don’t forget to appreciate what’s been on a doorstep all along. — Camilla Capasso, Modena, Italy 10:30 a.m. Use your hands Undertake the easiest and most fulfilling origami project of your life by folding 12 pieces of paper and building this lovely star . Modular origami has been my absolute favorite occupational therapy since I was a restless child: the process is enthralling and soothing. — Laila Dib, Berlin, Germany 12 p.m. Be isolated, together Check on neighbors on your block or floor with an email, text or phone call, or leave a card with your name and contact information. Are they OK? Do they need something from the store? Help with an errand? Food? Can you bring them a hot dish or home-baked bread? This simple act — done carefully and from a safe distance — palpably reduces our sense of fear and isolation. I’ve seen the faces of some neighbors for the first time. Now they wave. — Jim Carrier, Burlington, Vt.

Read the entire article. As you read, consider: How would this be different if it were written by teenagers for teenagers?

Then, create your own 36 Hours itinerary for teenagers stuck at home during the pandemic with ideas for how to spend the weekend wherever they are.

The 36 Hours editors suggest thinking “within the spirit of travel, even if many of us are housebound.” For example: an album or a song playlist; a book or movie that transports you; a particular recipe you love; or a clever way to virtually connect with family and friends. See more suggestions here .

Related Resources: Reader Idea | 36 Hours in Your Hometown 36 Hours in Learning: Creating Travel Itineraries Across the Curriculum

9. Photo Essay

Daily life looks very different now. Unusual scenes are playing out in homes, parks, grocery stores and streets across the country.

In “ New York Was Not Designed for Emptiness ,” New York Times photographers document what life in New York City looks like amid the pandemic. It begins:

The lights are still on in Times Square. Billboards blink and storefronts shine in neon. If only there were an audience for this spectacle. But the thoroughfares have been abandoned. The energy that once crackled along the concrete has eased. The throngs of tourists, the briskly striding commuters, the honking drivers have mostly skittered away. In their place is a wistful awareness that plays across all five boroughs: Look how eerie our brilliant landscape has become. Look how it no longer bustles. This is not the New York City anyone signed up for.

Read the rest of the essay and view the photos. As you read, note the photos or lines in the text that grab your attention most. Why do they stand out to you?

What does the pandemic look like where you live? Create your own photo essay, accompanied by a written piece, that illustrates your life now. In your essay, consider how you can communicate a particular theme or message about life during the pandemic through both your photos and words, like in the article you read.

Publishing Opportunity: The International Center of Photography is collecting a virtual archive of images related to the coronavirus pandemic. Learn how to submit yours here.

10. Comic Strip

Sometimes, words alone just won’t do. Visual mediums, like comics, have the advantage of being able to express emotion, reveal inner monologues, and explain complex subjects in ways that words on their own seldom can.

If anything proves this point, it is the Opinion section’s ongoing visual diary, “ Art in Isolation .” Scroll through this collection to see clever and poignant illustrations about life in these uncertain times. Read the comic “ Finding Connection When Home Alone ” by Gracey Zhang from this collection. As you read, note what stands out to you about the writing and illustrations. What lessons could they have for your own piece?

Then, create your own comic strip, modeled after the one you read, that explores some aspect of life during the pandemic. You can sketch and color your comic with paper and pen, or use an online tool like MakeBeliefsComix.com .

Need inspiration? If you’re keeping a quarantine journal, as we suggested above, you might create a graphic story based on a week of your life, or just a small part of it — like the meals you ate, the video games you played, or the conversations you had with friends over text. For more ideas, check out our writing prompts related to the coronavirus.

Related Resource: From Superheroes to Syrian Refugees: Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels With Resources From The New York Times

11. Podcast

Modern Love Podcast: In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories

Are you listening to any podcasts to help you get through the pandemic? Are they keeping you up-to-date on the news? Offering advice? Or just helping you escape from it all?

Create your own five-minute podcast segment that responds to the coronavirus in some way.

To get an idea of the different genres and formats your podcast could take, listen to one or more of these five-minute clips from three New York Times podcast episodes related to the coronavirus:

“ The Daily | Voices of the Pandemic ” (1:15-6:50)

“ Still Processing | A Pod From Both Our Houses ” (0:00-4:50)

“ Modern Love | In the Midst of the Coronavirus Pandemic, People Share Their Love Stories ” (1:30-6:30)

Use these as models for your own podcast. Consider the different narrative techniques they use to relate an experience of the pandemic — interviews, nonfiction storytelling and conversation — as well as how they create an engaging listening experience.

Need ideas for what to talk about? You might try translating any of the writing projects above into podcast form. Or turn to our coronavirus-related writing prompts for inspiration.

Publishing Opportunity: Submit your finished five-minute podcast to our Student Podcast Contest , which is open through May 19. Please read all the rules and guidelines before submitting.

Related Resource: Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts

12. Revise and Edit

“It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a writer — the first words you put on the page are a first draft,” Harry Guinness writes in “ How to Edit Your Own Writing .”

Editing your work may seem like something you do quickly — checking for spelling mistakes just before you turn in your essay — but Mr. Guinness argues it’s a project in its own right:

The time you put into editing, reworking and refining turns your first draft into a second — and then into a third and, if you keep at it, eventually something great. The biggest mistake you can make as a writer is to assume that what you wrote the first time through was good enough.

Read the rest of the article for a step-by-step guide to editing your own work. Then, revise one of the pieces you have written, following Mr. Guinness’s advice.

Publishing Opportunity: When you feel like your piece is “something great,” consider submitting it to one of the publishing opportunities we’ve suggested above. Or, see our list of 70-plus places that publish teenage writing and art to find more.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

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First day at school, amid the pandemic, both parents and children are happy to be back at school, and do not wish to return to distance learning..

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This September, the start of the school year seemed more overwhelming than ever before. One could observe the mixed feelings of excitement, joy, and confusion among the students, parents, and teachers at Sagarejo’s Public Schools #1 and #4.

Early morning on the first day of school, students began gathering in the garden of Sagarejo’s Public School #4. While it is not mandatory for the students to wear masks, many of them — including the youngest among them — were voluntarily covering their faces. This was not done solely for the purpose of hygienic protection, but also to demonstrate students’ awareness about COVID-19. After the many weeks of distance learning, which was challenging for children, parents, and teachers alike, the willingness to go back to normal learning processes is now demonstrably high; everyone displays a readiness to comply with the new safety regulations set by the government.

All the standard safety procedures are observed as children enter the school building: they pass a disinfection barrier, a thermal screening, and they sanitize their hands. These procedures delay entrance to the classroom, so children have to be at school 30 minutes earlier ensuring timely arrival for their first lessons.

Although hand sanitizers are installed throughout the building, teachers also encourage the children to go to the restrooms and wash their hands after each lesson.

The first day back in the classroom was unusual and emotional for both students and teachers. Wearing a mask, which is mandatory for teachers, makes their jobs physically harder due to the strained breathing. Masks also cover their emotional expressions, requiring students to focus harder to equally understand the information teachers are conveying.

The first lesson for all students was dedicated to sharing more information about COVID-19 and related safety regulations. Children were also introduced to their daily schedules.

First graders were overwhelmed by their first day back at school, however, those feelings would have been present with or without COVID-19. The first graders’ parents believe that their children’s feelings towards school depend greatly on developing an uninterrupted routine of in-school attendance. Some parents think that distance learning could ruin the children’s overall understanding of the school, and moreover, that this could be damaging to their mental health.

Both parents and children are happy to be back at school, and do not wish to return to distance learning. They say that they are ready to follow all the regulations set by the authorities.

Eighth grade students emphasize how important it is to be physically present in the classroom, to interact with friends, and to share opinions about different subjects with each other and with their teachers.

The readiness and enthusiasm of the parents, children, and administration to adapt to the new set of in-school rules makes the safe management of the learning process possible during this shared COVID-19 reality.

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26-27 სექტემბერი, 2024

The Third International Conference - ECE

September 26-27, 2024

On International Day of Education, UNICEF calls for increased focus on equal access to quality education in Georgia

Partnership initiative highlights the support provided for strengthening inclusive education in Georgia

Mission: Recovering Education in 2021

THE CONTEXT

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused abrupt and profound changes around the world.  This is the worst shock to education systems in decades, with the longest school closures combined with looming recession.  It will set back progress made on global development goals, particularly those focused on education. The economic crises within countries and globally will likely lead to fiscal austerity, increases in poverty, and fewer resources available for investments in public services from both domestic expenditure and development aid. All of this will lead to a crisis in human development that continues long after disease transmission has ended.

Disruptions to education systems over the past year have already driven substantial losses and inequalities in learning. All the efforts to provide remote instruction are laudable, but this has been a very poor substitute for in-person learning.  Even more concerning, many children, particularly girls, may not return to school even when schools reopen. School closures and the resulting disruptions to school participation and learning are projected to amount to losses valued at $10 trillion in terms of affected children’s future earnings.  Schools also play a critical role around the world in ensuring the delivery of essential health services and nutritious meals, protection, and psycho-social support. Thus, school closures have also imperilled children’s overall wellbeing and development, not just their learning.   

It’s not enough for schools to simply reopen their doors after COVID-19. Students will need tailored and sustained support to help them readjust and catch-up after the pandemic. We must help schools prepare to provide that support and meet the enormous challenges of the months ahead. The time to act is now; the future of an entire generation is at stake.

THE MISSION

Mission objective:  To enable all children to return to school and to a supportive learning environment, which also addresses their health and psychosocial well-being and other needs.

Timeframe : By end 2021.

Scope : All countries should reopen schools for complete or partial in-person instruction and keep them open. The Partners - UNESCO , UNICEF , and the World Bank - will join forces to support countries to take all actions possible to plan, prioritize, and ensure that all learners are back in school; that schools take all measures to reopen safely; that students receive effective remedial learning and comprehensive services to help recover learning losses and improve overall welfare; and their teachers are prepared and supported to meet their learning needs. 

Three priorities:

1.    All children and youth are back in school and receive the tailored services needed to meet their learning, health, psychosocial wellbeing, and other needs. 

Challenges : School closures have put children’s learning, nutrition, mental health, and overall development at risk. Closed schools also make screening and delivery for child protection services more difficult. Some students, particularly girls, are at risk of never returning to school. 

Areas of action : The Partners will support the design and implementation of school reopening strategies that include comprehensive services to support children’s education, health, psycho-social wellbeing, and other needs. 

Targets and indicators

2.    All children receive support to catch up on lost learning.

Challenges : Most children have lost substantial instructional time and may not be ready for curricula that were age- and grade- appropriate prior to the pandemic. They will require remedial instruction to get back on track. The pandemic also revealed a stark digital divide that schools can play a role in addressing by ensuring children have digital skills and access.

Areas of action : The Partners will (i) support the design and implementation of large-scale remedial learning at different levels of education, (ii) launch an open-access, adaptable learning assessment tool that measures learning losses and identifies learners’ needs, and (iii) support the design and implementation of digital transformation plans that include components on both infrastructure and ways to use digital technology to accelerate the development of foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Incorporating digital technologies to teach foundational skills could complement teachers’ efforts in the classroom and better prepare children for future digital instruction.   

While incorporating remedial education, social-emotional learning, and digital technology into curricula by the end of 2021 will be a challenge for most countries, the Partners agree that these are aspirational targets that they should be supporting countries to achieve this year and beyond as education systems start to recover from the current crisis.

3.   All teachers are prepared and supported to address learning losses among their students and to incorporate  digital technology into their teaching.

Challenges : Teachers are in an unprecedented situation in which they must make up for substantial loss of instructional time from the previous school year and teach the current year’s curriculum. They must also protect their own health in school. Teachers will need training, coaching, and other means of support to get this done. They will also need to be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccination, after frontline personnel and high-risk populations.  School closures also demonstrated that in addition to digital skills, teachers may also need support to adapt their pedagogy to deliver instruction remotely. 

Areas of action : The Partners will advocate for teachers to be prioritized in COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, after frontline personnel and high-risk populations, and provide capacity-development on pedagogies for remedial learning and digital and blended teaching approaches. 

Country level actions and global support

UNESCO, UNICEF, and World Bank are joining forces to support countries to achieve the Mission, leveraging their expertise and actions on the ground to support national efforts and domestic funding.

Country Level Action

1.  Mobilize team to support countries in achieving the three priorities

The Partners will collaborate and act at the country level to support governments in accelerating actions to advance the three priorities.

2.  Advocacy to mobilize domestic resources for the three priorities

The Partners will engage with governments and decision-makers to prioritize education financing and mobilize additional domestic resources.

Global level action

1.  Leverage data to inform decision-making

The Partners will join forces to   conduct surveys; collect data; and set-up a global, regional, and national real-time data-warehouse.  The Partners will collect timely data and analytics that provide access to information on school re-openings, learning losses, drop-outs, and transition from school to work, and will make data available to support decision-making and peer-learning.

2.  Promote knowledge sharing and peer-learning in strengthening education recovery

The Partners will join forces in sharing the breadth of international experience and scaling innovations through structured policy dialogue, knowledge sharing, and peer learning actions.

The time to act on these priorities is now. UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank are partnering to help drive that action.

Last Updated: Mar 30, 2021

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clock This article was published more than  3 years ago

Going back to school: The good, the bad and the ugly

Going back to school during the coronavirus pandemic has elicited a jumble of emotions for teachers, students and parents, who have both wanted to see kids back in school buildings but also have feared the risk of contracting covid-19.

This post reports on the experiences of people who have returned to school for the 2020-2021 school year in various school districts. It was written by Carol Burris, an award-winning former principal and now executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy organization that supports traditional public school districts.

The organization has been tracking 37 school districts in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, representing more than 195,000 students plus thousands of staff in areas with county covid-19 rates ranging from 0 percent to 5.9 percent. All school districts require the wearing of masks, and Pennsylvania schools have active sports programs. The districts studied were in counties that had low coronavirus rates and required wearing masks.

Burris was the long-serving principal of South Side High School in New York’s Rockville Centre School District; the high school is mentioned in her report below. In 2010, she was recognized by the School Administrators Association of New York State as its outstanding educator of the year, and in 2013, she was recognized as the New York state high school principal of the year.

Feared coronavirus outbreaks in schools yet to arrive, early data shows

By Carol Burris

No one could have been happier than Cooper Knorr when he returned to school this September. Cooper, who bravely battles osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly known as brittle bone disease, had just recovered from his 10th major surgery following his 90th broken bone when his school shut down last spring. “My eyes would hurt from looking at the computer screen,” he said. “In school, it is so much easier to learn.”

“School is his life,” his mother told me. “He is so excited to be back.”

At the same time that she was delighted for him, however, Christine Brown was battling anxiety about returning to the high school where she teaches English. “I was worried. I wished I could stay home,” she said. … I’m not a frontline worker. But seeing the excitement of my own children going back and how grateful they are, my opinion shifted.”

Brown and Cooper Knorr were among the 15 teachers, administrators, parents and students I interviewed about returning to in-person schooling. Their school districts were in New York or Pennsylvania in areas where covid-19 is low, and as one superintendent told me, “We have a fighting chance.”

Unsurprisingly, feelings about the return to in-person teaching are complicated. Tamara Sommers teaches third-graders in Long Beach, New York. She and her special education co-teacher are back five days a week.

“I am normally a germaphobe. The rest of the world is now catching up to me,” she said with a laugh, admitting that she was initially frightened by the thought of return. “We began the week feeling nervous, but every day got better and better. We are solving the problems that arise.”

In rural New York, a middle school principal who requested anonymity opened his school in Columbia County, where there have been few cases. Nevertheless, a few of his teachers were terrified to come back. That changed, he told me, when the students arrived.

“Everyone was relieved. The kids are great at masks, although I sometimes need to remind the adults after school ends to keep them on,” he said. “We just have to work on our social distancing.”

Thom Hessel, a physics teacher at Rockville Centre’s South Side High School, is married to an intensive care doctor who worked through covid-19′s darkest days in New York this past spring. “I saw amazing ICU [intensive care unit] doctors nearly broken last spring,” he said.

Still, Hessel said, he felt cautiously optimistic about sending his own children back, as well as returning to his high school classroom. “I don’t trust the federal government right now, but I trust the state and the county. The other alternative is to hide under your bed.”

The kids are great

The educators in New York and Pennsylvania with whom I spoke reported that students were cooperative regarding wearing masks and following other safety rules. “The kids are really well behaved and excited to be in school,” Sommers told me. All attributed it to the appreciation that students feel for the chance to learn in person once again.

One of those grateful students is Kirill Kilfoyle, a senior at Wellington C. Mepham High School in Bellmore, N.Y. Although he could have remained on remote learning, he said, he wanted to return to school, and his parents agreed.

Kirill’s mother, Marla, was initially frightened at the thought of sending her son back but decided that the district, whose leaders and teachers she trusted, would make sure that safety measures were followed.

“My son has been back to work since July and has been wearing a face mask and understanding and following the safety protocols I put in place,” she said. “As time went on and the district began to share the protocols they plan to follow, I became more comfortable sending him back. I trust the teachers and the district.”

Being with friends was important to Kirill; however, he primarily based his decision on his remote learning experience last spring. “I don’t like online learning,” he said. “When I need it, I can get help in class. When I am home, it is too easy to get distracted.” Although he began with a hybrid schedule, he jumped at the chance when he was allowed to go back full time. “I am trying to have a normal day.”

Cristi Tursi, science director of the Long Beach School District, said she chose to send her two daughters back to their local parochial school full time. She told me she did so despite “twangs of fear and concern.” “Long Beach has guidelines for districtwide administrators, but I will still be in every school, so it didn’t make sense to keep my own children home,” she said. “We are a healthy family. We have confidence that if we were to get the virus, in the end, we would be fine.”

Not every parent feels as secure.

There are differences among the confidence levels of parents among districts, as reflected in the percentages of students who return. In the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, an affluent and overwhelmingly white district on Long Island, 93 percent of the students made the same decision as Kirill. In Long Beach, where 36 percent of the students are Black or Latinx, and 37 percent of all students receive free or reduced-price lunch, 83 percent decided to return.

The Network for Public Education is following 37 districts in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut that reopened — either hybrid or full time. Of the 23 districts that responded to our inquiry regarding remote learners, the average rate of students who opted to not attend in person was 21 percent. Percentages ranged from 6 percent of the school population to 50 percent. Larger percentages of students of color are associated with higher remote rates.

Superintendent Joe Roy said he has been carefully examining patterns among the 25 percent of students whose families chose remote learning in his district in Bethlehem, Pa.

For the most part, they are students from affluent families who have academic supports for learning at home, or conversely, are from the least affluent homes. The families of his district’s students of color, many of whom work in local warehouses, were hit harder by the pandemic and, therefore, are more reticent to send their children back to school.

Roy’s neighboring district, Allentown, where 86 percent of the students are Black or Latinx, decided to go all virtual after a parent survey showed a majority were not ready for in-person learning. One middle school teacher with whom I spoke, who requested anonymity, said he hopes that the schools open soon. Technology for remote learning has been an issue he told me — from hardware to poor connections.

“We are losing kids,” he said. “Our kindergarten enrollment is much lower than it has been in previous years. Of a class of 19, maybe 17 of my students log on to my early morning class. When I meet them later in the day, 12 or fewer show up. A 6½-hour day on Zoom is brutal. Some are keeping their cameras off, and others don’t respond. Many of my students can’t work independently.”

The challenges of in-person learning

Over half of the 37 districts we are following now bring some or all students back full time. Those schools that are using hybrid typically split students into two small cohorts that share the same teacher. Some bring those cohorts back three days one week and two days the following week. Others bring the cohorts back only two days a week — on consecutive days or staggered days with a fifth day when all stay home.

Although those I spoke with are glad to be back, school is certainly not the same as before the pandemic.

Kirill said he finds it difficult to see through the plexiglass barrier surrounding his desk, and Cooper said he misses sitting and talking with his friends. Sommers told me how her first day of school jokes fell flat because her mask hid her facial expressions. Other teachers told me how tiring it was to speak while wearing a mask.

Teaching students on their at-home days is challenging as well. Some schools are live-streaming classes to students at home, while others provide instruction asynchronously via worksheets, videos and assignments.

Jenn Wolfe, the 2021 New York state teacher of the year, teaches social studies in Oceanside High School. She teaches students in class while streaming instruction to those at home — and it can be difficult, she said.

For one thing, she said, it takes time to get all students logged in, and Internet connections sometimes drop. And it is difficult to pay enough attention to students in the class while dealing with distracting noises or behaviors arising from students at home.

“For me, the time I have with kids in the class is golden and I want to maximize that time,” she said. Because her district permits teachers to alternate between streaming and asynchronous instruction, she said she plans to experiment with having students log in for a few moments and then move to asynchronous, posted instruction to see which is more effective.

Educator Christine Brown in neighboring Rockville Centre also described the difficulties of teaching in-person and remote students simultaneously. “The work would be easier if I were staying home and only teaching remotely,” she admitted. She described the experience of teaching in-person and remote as “plates spinning in the air.”

“Reaching the kids at home is especially hard,” she said. “Some are school-ready, sitting up and ready to work. Others have hoodies up, or they are in their bedrooms.”

Brown’s colleague, math teacher Mary Coleman, agreed. “It’s a lot. I use my iPad to take attendance, my desktop computer to project the lesson and my laptop to keep an eye on the kids at home,” she said. Nevertheless, Coleman said she likes the idea of streaming. “I am learning how to use breakout rooms for real and virtual learners to help them socialize and be a part of the class.”

Even with her best streaming efforts, however, her students find it more challenging when at home. Coleman asked her students for feedback on how it was going. “Two-thirds reported that on the days they are home learning virtually, it is harder to learn. It is harder to focus and more difficult to process new material,” she said. Coleman concluded that there is “something about that body-to-body connection that somehow helps learning.”

And then there is the question of the teacher’s willingness to make the remote student a part of the class. One Port Washington, N.Y., parent, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, chose full-time remote instruction for her elementary school son. He is streamed into a class in a district where teachers had strongly objected to cameras in the class. “I am not sure I made the right decision,” she said. “He is like a fly on the wall in his class.”

Streamed instruction raises additional complications. Teachers acknowledged the inhibiting effect of teaching when others in the household might listen in. As a social studies teacher, Wolfe would naturally include discussions of the presidential election as part of her classes. She said she now worries that the robust discussions and debates she usually includes might lead to parent complaints.

“Sensitive topics like the election require preestablishing class norms and relationships with students in order to build the skills necessary for living in a democracy,” Wolfe said. “As parents walk through rooms, however, they might hear something they do not agree with and mistake healthy debate for electioneering.”

Brown said that this past spring, a parent in the district where she lives recorded and posted a class on social media.

As a high school English teacher, she said she knows literature can bring up sensitive issues in class discussions. “I teach Romeo and Juliet. In many ways, it is a play about bad parenting. … It ends with teenage suicide. We grapple with young people who hate because they are taught by adults to hate. For adolescents, school is a safe place where they can freely express their ideas. That dynamic changes when parents are listening in.”

Still, the other option, asynchronous learning on at-home days, has its drawbacks as well.

Lori Rusack, a fifth-grade teacher in Pennsylvania, told me that she is thrilled to be back in the classroom.

“I felt I lost so many kids in the spring,” she said. “I am much happier to be with children. I like our workflow of every other day in person-instruction. We call those days onstage days. The difficulty occurs on the offstage days, when students must independently do the work. It is hard to get all of the assignments in.”

Rusack said there were haves and have-nots in terms of parental supervision and support, depending upon family resources and work. She has resorted to giving out certificates for hybrid heroes, even giving one boy a quarter every time he hands in his work.

Discussing the pros and cons of all of the hybrid models, Superintendent Roy commented, “none of this is our preferred model.” However, he believes that hybrid learning with small groups of students has helped the contact tracing needed in order to keep everyone safe.

What we know so far about safety

The Bethlehem Area School District, which opened in August, serves 13,600 students educated in 22 schools. Over half are Black or Latinx, and 60 percent receive free or reduced-price lunch. The district has a website that keeps the public up to date on coronavirus data. There have been 19 students or staff members who have tested positive, but no outbreaks in the schools.

The city of Bethlehem, which has its own health department, advises the superintendent how to proceed. Some cases require no action — such as second-shift workers who had no contact with others. In other cases, there has been contact tracing and small group quarantine.

So far, infections have resulted from activities outside the school, including carpools, flag football and a Bible study class. “Because we know that the cases are not coming from in-school spread, we can quarantine small groups but not shut down,” Roy said.

To date, we have not seen reports of in-school spread in any of the districts we are following. While some have experienced cases of covid-19 that resulted in short closures for contact tracing and cleaning, most cases have resulted in small group quarantine. All of the schools we are following require students and staff to wear masks.

That, however, is not always the case. A southern Illinois teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, told me of the absolute terror she feels each day because some of her colleagues are casual about wearing their masks and even allow students to take them off, despite a state mandate that masks must be worn except when students are eating or playing an instrument. “I teach in Trump country,” she said. “Some teachers don’t think masks are needed.”

Red states can be especially problematic. In Florida, there is no state mandate for masks. Other Republican-led states, however, are more responsible when it comes to safety measures. Despite pushback from the state’s attorney general, masks in schools were mandated in the state of Louisiana by the Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards.

That mandate makes all the difference to teacher Mercedes Schneider. “I teach in a red state with a blue governor, and let me tell you, the presence of that blue governor has given me confidence that I would not be sacrificed to a politically rushed return to a packed classroom of non-masked high school students,” she said. “Three weeks in, both mask-wearing and hybrid-schedule-enabled social distancing have been critical factors in stabilizing our in-person learning at my school.”

Silver linings

Despite all of the challenges of teaching in the time of covid-19, teachers found some silver linings. Tamara Sommers said she believes that many families are now more involved. Fifth-grade teacher Lori Rusack told me she enjoys working with some of the new technology options she now has.

Thom Hessel hopes there will be long-term benefits for children. “Maybe it’s building a level of resilience in kids. Perhaps they will have a greater appreciation of everything they have when this is over.”

And Jenn Wolfe said she saw long-term benefits for teachers as well. “Everyone has to rethink their teaching,” she said. “Old lesson plans are out the window. There is much more talk about instruction, and teacher-to-teacher collaboration has become the norm in the faculty room. We are constantly reevaluating what we do and how we do it and then enhancing what we do.”

Forty-year veteran teacher Mary Coleman could have applied for a medical exemption but declined. For her, coming back was itself the silver lining.

“With masks, social distancing, staggered class dismissal and hand sanitizer in class, I feel very safe, safer than in some other places I have been,” she said. “Frankly, I needed to be back for my own psyche. I need the kids as much as they need me.”

Going Back to School After COVID: Controversies and Challenges

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Description

As the U.S. begins to re-emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic , the re-opening of the schools has been met with controversies over vaccines and mask mandates. Additionally, the polarization and politicization of COVID-19 has led to cross fires between the leaders and the public. How are educational leaders navigating through these trials and tribulations? How does the public feel about these issues?

In this seminar, Pedro A. Noguera , dean at USC Rossier School of Education , speaks with USC Rossier Provost Professor Shaun Harper ; Sandra Lyon , retired superintendent at Palm Springs Unified School District; Julie A. Marsh , professor at USC Rossier and faculty director at Policy Analysis for California Education; and Neeraj Sood , vice dean of research at USC Sol Price School of Public Policy .

Who Will Benefit

– Those looking to learn more about the effects of going back to school after COVID – Policymakers who want to understand how educational leaders are addressing the pandemic controversies – Those hoping to gain deeper insights into the different racial equity issues faced within education systems

About Our Featured Faculty

Pedro A. Noguera is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. A sociologist, Noguera’s research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, as well as by demographic trends in local, regional and global contexts. He is the author, co-author and editor of 13 books. Prior to being appointed dean of the USC Rossier, Noguera served as a Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the faculty at UCLA he served as a tenured professor and holder of endowed chairs at New York University (2004-2015), Harvard University (2000-2003) and the University of California, Berkeley (1990-2000).

Julie Marsh is a professor of education policy at USC Rossier School of Education and faculty director of policy analysis for California Education. Marsh specializes in research on K-12 policy and governance, blending perspectives in education, sociology, and political science. Her work has focused on accountability and instructional policy, with particular attention to the process and politics of adoption and implementation, and the ways in which policies shape practice in urban settings. Prior to coming to USC in July 2010, Marsh was at the RAND Corporation where she last served as senior policy researcher. She received a PhD in Education Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University, a master’s in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley, and BA in American studies from Stanford University.

Neeraj Sood , PhD, is professor and vice dean for research and faculty affairs at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and a founding member the USC Schaeffer Center. He is also director of the COVID Initiative at the USC Schaeffer Center. He has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals in economics, medicine and policy, including JAMA, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Health Affairs, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and Health Services Research. His work has been featured in media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report and Scientific American. Sood was the finalist for the 16th and 21st annual National Institute for Health Care Management Health Care Research Award, recognizing outstanding research in health policy. He was also the 2009 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Prize, recognizing outstanding research demonstrating how medical research impacts the economy.

Related Online Graduate Programs

• Safety tips for attending school during COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, families and caregivers might worry about their children getting the COVID-19 virus at school.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 outbreaks do happen in school settings. But global research has shown, at least with early variants, that when schools use multiple prevention strategies, the spread of the COVID-19 virus in schools can be lower than or similar to community spread.

What can you do to protect your school-aged child? Consider the strategies schools and families can follow to protect students' health.

Encouraging COVID-19 vaccination

COVID-19 vaccines are available for children age 6 months and older in the U.S. A COVID-19 vaccine and booster doses might prevent your child from getting the COVID-19 virus or becoming seriously ill or hospitalized due to COVID-19 . Getting a COVID-19 vaccine can also help keep your child in school and more safely participate in sports and other group activities too.

Wearing face masks

School policies vary when it comes to face masks. However, whether or not you're vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends wearing a face mask in indoor public spaces if you're in a community with a high number of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Wearing the most protective face mask that you'll wear regularly, fits well and is comfortable while indoors can limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The CDC recommends that students and staff who have been exposed or think they've been exposed to COVID-19 wear a mask around others for 10 days after their last exposure.

If your child wears a face mask in school, consider these tips:

• Have your child wear the most protective mask possible that fits well and is comfortable.
• Provide your child with a clean mask and a backup mask each day. Consider giving your child a clean, resealable bag to store the mask during lunch.
• Label your child's mask so it's not confused with other children's masks. Tell your child to never wear another child's used mask.

Screening test

Screening identifies people with COVID-19 who don't have symptoms and who don't have a known, suspected or reported exposure to COVID-19 . This can help keep COVID-19 from spreading further.

If COVID-19 is spreading at a high level according to the CDC , schools might screen all students and staff who participate in activities that may involve a higher risk, such as:

• Choir or band
• Soccer, football or other sports that involve close contact
• Dances or sports tournaments

Schools also may screen students and staff before and after breaks, such as a holiday or spring break.

Schools vary in their use of screening. They may change requirements based on attendance by students at high risk of severe COVID-19 . Or they may change requirements based on risk level in the community.

Proper ventilation

Improving ventilation in schools can reduce the number of COVID-19 virus particles in the air. Opening multiple windows and doors, using fans, or changing the heating, ventilation, air conditioning or air filtration systems can help. During transportation to and from school, keeping windows open a few inches also can improve air circulation.

Handwashing

Schools and parents should encourage students to frequently wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Children should cover their mouths and noses with an elbow or a tissue when coughing or sneezing. Children also should avoid touching their eyes, noses and mouths. To ensure thorough handwashing, kids can be taught to keep washing their hands until they have sung the entire "Happy Birthday" song twice (about 20 seconds).

Staying home when sick and getting tested

Students who have symptoms of an infectious illness should stay home from school and get tested for COVID-19 . Possible symptoms of COVID-19 in children include:

• Cough that becomes productive
• New loss of taste or smell
• Changes in the skin, such as discolored areas on the feet and hands
• Sore throat
• Nausea, vomiting, belly pain or diarrhea
• Muscle aches and pain
• Extreme fatigue
• New severe headache
• New nasal congestion

Everyone with COVID-19 should stay home and isolate from others for at least five full days. School policies might vary on when a child who has had COVID-19 can return to school.

If you are recovering from COVID-19 , the CDC recommends wearing the most protective face mask that you'll wear regularly, fits well and is comfortable. Wear the mask while you are around other people through day 10. Children who are too young to wear a mask should be cared for in as separate a space as possible by a caregiver who is wearing a mask.

Contact tracing

Contact tracing is the process of identifying people who may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 . During an outbreak, contact tracing to help students and staff know when to stay home can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 . Strategies such as improving ventilation or wearing a well-fitting mask also can help prevent further spread.

If your child's school does contact tracing, make sure you understand what steps your child needs to take after a COVID-19 exposure.

Cleaning and disinfecting

Cleaning once a day is usually enough to lower the risk of germs spreading from surfaces in schools. The CDC suggests schools have procedures for staff to follow after meals, after exposure to fluids such as blood or saliva, and after changing diapers.

What to do if your child gets COVID-19

Even if your family and your child's school carefully follow these prevention strategies, it's still possible for your child to get COVID-19 . If your child tests positive for COVID-19 :

• Talk to your child's health care provider. Keep your child home from school and away from others, except to get medical care.
• Focus on relieving your child's symptoms. This might include rest, plenty of fluids and use of pain relievers.
• Contact your child's school. Make sure you understand the school's policy on when your child can return to school. Find out if distance learning is an option while your child remains at home.
• Consider picking one person in your family to care for your sick child. Have that caregiver be with your child and separated from others in your home, when possible.
• Unfortunately, pets can catch COVID-19, so limit contact between your child and your pets.
• Call the health care provider if your child gets sicker. Emergency warning signs include trouble breathing, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, new confusion, inability to wake or stay awake, and pale, gray, or blue-colored skin, lips or nail beds — depending on your child's skin color.
• Schools and childcare programs. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/parent-faqs.html. Accessed Aug. 16, 2022.
• Stay up to date with your vaccines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html. Accessed April 20, 2022.
• How to protect yourself and others. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Accessed April 20, 2022.
• Information for pediatric healthcare providers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/pediatric-hcp.html. Accessed April 28, 2022.
• Quarantine and isolation. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html. Accessed April 28, 2022.
• COVID-19 guidance for safe schools and promotion of in-person learning. American Academy of Pediatrics. https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/. Accessed April 20, 2022.
• When and how to wash your hands. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html. Accessed April 20, 2022.
• Caring for someone sick at home. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/care-for-someone.html. Accessed April 29, 2022.
• Use and care of masks. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html. Accessed Feb. 28, 2022.
• COVID-19 community levels. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/community-levels.html. Accessed Feb. 28, 2022.
• COVID-19 pandemic: Helping young children and parents transition back to school. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/features/COVID-19-helping-children-transition-back-to-school.html. Accessed April 28, 2022.
• Guidance for COVID-19 prevention in K-12 schools. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html#anchor_1625661984621. Accessed Aug. 16, 2022.
• COVID-19 vaccines for children and teens. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/children-teens.html. Accessed Aug. 16, 2022.
• Use and care of masks. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html. Accessed April 28, 2022.
• AskMayoExpert. COVID-19: Outpatient and inpatient management (child). Mayo Clinic; 2021.

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Why did schools lose students after COVID-19?

Media inquiries, subscribe to the economic studies bulletin, sofoklis goulas and sofoklis goulas fellow - economic studies , the hamilton project isabelle pula isabelle pula former research intern - economic studies , the hamilton project.

May 16, 2024

Key takeaways:

• The share of students attending traditional public schools in 2022-23 was about 4 percentage points below pre-pandemic enrollment (2019-20).
• Public school enrollment losses are not fully explained by changes in population, charter school enrollment, or private school enrollment, suggesting that many families have chosen to homeschool after the pandemic.
• This analysis uses family satisfaction data and targeted interviews of home-educators to explore factors behind families’ decisions to homeschool.
• 11 min read

Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic, its consequences are still palpable in school attendance and enrollment. While in 2022-23 the share of students attending traditional public schools (TPS) increased by roughly 1 percentage point relative to the prior year, it remains 4 percentage points below 2019-20. These enrollment losses are not fully explained by population changes or changes in charter school enrollment.  In this post, we consider the reasons families may explore schooling options for their children away from TPS and discuss their implications. We use family satisfaction data from New York City Public Schools to assess the role of perceived school quality in school enrollment decisions. Insights from targeted interviews of home-educators and professionals supporting families pursuing non-classroom-based learning help us delineate what student experience may look like in the changing K-12 education landscape.

Changing landscape of school enrollment

The enrollment declines after COVID-19 reflect a changing K-12 education landscape. The pandemic has been a wake-up call for many families. COVID-19 gave parents and guardians a window into what was happening in their kids’ classrooms and forced them to explore alternative learning arrangements, which included teaching their children at home. This helped them find out how easy or difficult it is to teach their children as well as whether their pre-pandemic schooling arrangements did a good job educating them. This realization has pushed families to consider different schooling arrangements after COVID-19. The incentives of families to explore different schooling arrangements might have been even greater when families felt that the TPS system could not deliver a high enough pace of learning for their children. This could represent families of children on both ends of the performance distribution. Families of children who may be struggling at school—including those who experienced learning losses during the pandemic—are likely to try out something new to help their child catch up.

Families of higher-performing children may also be willing to explore new arrangements. The families of these students often feel that the traditional public school does not allow them to learn fast enough, possibly because the pandemic-induced learning resulted in academic gains for these students. In either case, the combination of pandemic-induced realizations about school performance and availability of arrangements that promise accelerated learning has led parents to want to check if the grass is greener on the other side of TPS. At the same time, any alternative arrangement that families tried out during the pandemic may have stuck post-COVID-19, possibly because these arrangements work well enough for families not to change them.

Perceived school quality

We use data on family satisfaction from the annual New York City School Survey administered to parents and guardians to investigate changes in family satisfaction regarding school quality before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which may be a driver of willingness to consider alternative arrangements. We construct an index of family satisfaction using 13 questions related to satisfaction with the education their child receives at school, whether they report being satisfied with their child’s teachers, and whether they believe the school provides resources for and prepares their child for college, career, and success in life.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of the family satisfaction index across schools during the three years prior to the start of COVID-19 (school years 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19) and 2022-23. The results show a negative shift in family satisfaction after COVID-19. 1 In particular, more families reported lower levels of satisfaction from school quality after COVID-19 relative to before COVID-19.

Family dissatisfaction with public schools’ response to COVID-19 may be associated with public school disenrollment . Figure 2 explores the school-level association between family satisfaction and enrollment changes before and after COVID-19 in NYC. Dissatisfied families who leave public schools are not included in this investigation. Panel A of figure 2 shows the scatterplot, along with a fitted line, and a correlation coefficient between family satisfaction and the change in school enrollment over a three-year period before COVID-19. Panel B of figure 2 shows the association between family satisfaction and the change in school enrollment over a three-year period after COVID-19. The results reveal a decrease in the association between family satisfaction and school enrollment after COVID-19. 2 This suggests that as family satisfaction becomes more complicated after COVID-19 (i.e., the distribution widens as variance increases), other factors may contribute to family decisions regarding school enrollment.  

Demand for learning flexibility after COVID-19

The types of learning arrangements away from TPS that many families have considered since COVID-19 vary. Families have explored options like charter schools, private schools, and home education. A previous THP paper showed that neither population changes nor changes in charter school enrollment since 2020 fully explain the enrollment losses of TPS. Neither does the increase in private school enrollment explain away the declined enrollment of TPS. This suggests that many families may have chosen to educate their children at home after COVID-19.

In 2019, about 3.7 percent of students ages 5–17 received instruction at home. Interest in homeschooling grew rapidly during the pandemic with 11.1 percent of households with school-age children homeschooling in Fall 2020. Data from 390 districts show at least one home-schooled child for every 10 in public schools during the 2021-22 school year. No nationwide data on home education have been made available after the pandemic.

The choice of families to educate their children at home may be related to a family’s educational level and their capacity to allocate time to home education. The proliferation of flexible working arrangements after COVID-19 also may have allowed families to explore learning arrangements for their children that were previously less attainable for households with working parents/guardians.

The reasons families educate their children at home after the pandemic may differ from families that home-schooled their children before COVID-19. The nature of the home-schooling experience and the families’ expectations in terms of results may also differ. The lack of current nationwide data on home education after COVID-19 and the wide variation in reporting requirements of home education across states makes it difficult to grasp the prevalence of homeschooling and what homeschooling looks like today. To understand better what home education means after COVID-19, we spoke with home-educators and professionals who help families educate their children primarily at home. We present here what we learned.

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Families’ motivations for home education are different after COVID-19 relative to prior the pandemic, our interviewees explained. Before COVID-19, most families educating their children at home were doing so due to ideological, moral, or religious reasons. According to 2019 data from the National Household Education Survey (NHES), 74.7 percent of families reported their motivation for home-schooling as “a desire to provide moral instruction.” Similarly, 58.9 percent of respondents reported “A desire to provide religious instruction” as a reason for homeschooling. In contrast, our targeted interviews suggest that families taking their children away from the TPS system in recent years are more likely to be motivated by a desire to improve their child’s pace of learning or provide more specialized learning.

Because families’ motivation for home education differed prior to COVID-19, the content families choose to teach their children after COVID-19 is different from before. Our interviewees report that after COVID-19, parents and guardians are less likely to deviate from standard school curriculum compared to families that home-schooled before COVID-19. Three factors support this practice. First, the reason that some families home-school after COVID-19 is precisely because their child struggled with the content taught at school. As a result, this content is the first thing the families try to tackle before considering other material. Second, parents and guardians are often not professional educators, and they are more likely to teach material for which study guides, textbooks, and curricula already exist. Third, families who are new to home-schooling are often uncertain whether this arrangement will work well for their child or whether they will be able to maintain this arrangement long-term, and they want their child to be able to re-integrate back into the TPS system. Home-schooled children who are taught standard school content may have an easier time re-joining a classroom-based instructional model.

Home-based schooling arrangements are not as isolating as one may imagine, our interviews suggested. For example , some families often arrange for a hired teacher to teach a small number of children in the neighborhood. Or some parents and guardians, while primarily teaching their children alone at home, may plan social and learning activities with groups of other home-schooled students.

An interviewee reported that charter schools that provide non-classroom-based learning or independent study, which have gained students post-COVID-19, allow families to pursue home education while still being connected online to a system that provides support to the children and their families. Families that choose to enroll in one of these non-classroom-based charters are assigned a teacher for their child and are provided with a budget for educational resources their student may need. The teacher assigned to the student will routinely evaluate the learning progress of students at home, ensuring that they are still meeting state or local required educational standards. Non-classroom-based charter schools are more common in Alaska and California .

Homeschooling regulations vary widely across the US. While it’s legal in all 50 states, tracking and oversight differ. Some states do not require families to notify school officials, while others require an official notice once or annually. Requirements vary for parent qualifications, assessments, subjects taught, and immunizations. Access to special education and extracurriculars also varies. To the extent that staying connected to a school while home educating can be part of regulatory requirements, non-classroom-based charter schools offer a legal vehicle for home education.

The connection with a school is important to many families who are new to homeschooling or to students who need learning support services or those who plan to later return to more traditional schooling options. Some families report non-classroom-based schools working well for their young elementary-aged children and their middle school children but describe their high-school aged child to have a desire for things a non-classroom-based schools are not usually able to provide, such as clubs or sports teams.

Public charter schools that allow for students to learn primarily at home also open a window for families who wanted to try home-schooling but felt that it was financially inaccessible, our interviewees suggested. The cost of books, lesson plans, and learning materials can add up. The financial strain of those resources often impacts families’ decision to homeschool. Through non-classroom-based charter schools, the financial burden of home education shifts from the individual household as these students receive similar funding to those enrolled in classroom-based public schools.

Implications

Families’ demand for flexibility regarding schooling arrangements and pedagogical approaches is higher after COVID-19 relative to pre-pandemic. The motivations of families for taking their children out of traditional public schools might have changed post-pandemic. After COVID-19, many families feel that what public schools offered before COVID-19 is not enough now. We believe this helps explain the enrollment declines we see in TPS.

Of course, preferred school arrangements outside the TPS system look different from household to household, and some of these arrangements likely existed even before COVID-19. In some of these learning arrangements, such as the home-based ones, it is hard to know whether students learn at a faster pace than they would in TPS. In many states, standardized testing is optional, while colleges and universities often waive the test score requirement in admission applications. This means that student performance data availability is limited but also the data available may be skewed toward test takers who are more likely to do well as they can use their scores to improve signaling in their college applications.

A key implication of our investigation is that more data are needed to understand the demand for more flexible or personalized learning arrangements after the COVID-19 pandemic and the learning efficacy of these arrangements. Particularly, data on how many students flow toward non-classroom-based learning arrangements, what are the demographics of these families, and what are the demographics of those left behind are much needed to understand the equity implications of declined enrollments. From a planning perspective, more complete and accurate measurement is needed to design policies and programs that help students learn, regardless of where they learn.

Declining enrollment in brick-and-mortar schools may mean that eventually fewer of them are needed. School closure or consolidation is likely to adversely affect families who do not have access to learning arrangements away from TPS. Without knowing how permanent the new equilibrium of the K-12 education landscape is, one may worry that lost school infrastructure and decreased capacity in student seats will hurt those who will rely on TPS in the future.

The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here . The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation.

• Results are similar when data from the 2020-21 school year or the 2021-22 school year are used.
• The results are similar when the family satisfaction index in 2019-20 is used instead of the family satisfaction index in 2020-21 in the investigation of the association between family satisfaction and school enrollment changes after COVID-19.

K-12 Education

Economic Studies

The Hamilton Project

Melissa Kay Diliberti, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Ashley Woo

Jamie Klinenberg, Jon Valant, Nicolas Zerbino

May 7, 2024

The Brookings Institution, Washington DC

8:30 am - 4:30 pm EDT

Students are increasingly refusing to go to school. It’s becoming a mental health crisis.

Since the pandemic, more students are school-avoidant, leaving parents feeling hopeless and schools unequipped to find a solution..

Kyle Slagle, USA TODAY Network

The police were in her driveway. They wanted her son.

Jayne Demsky’s teenage son was not a criminal. He never stole, used illegal substances, or physically hurt anyone. He just didn’t go to school.

It started in the middle of 6th grade when he began staying home from school on days his anxiety was too difficult to manage. Those days became more frequent, turning into weeks and months, until he stopped going altogether. Now an officer was at her house, waiting to take her son to school.

“I would describe it as hell,” said the mother from Mahwah, New Jersey, who recalled feeling hopeless and constantly "on the verge of an emotional breakdown."

Demsky sought help from educators, doctors and counselors, trying to understand what was stopping her son from going to school for nearly a year. Finally, a psychiatrist told Demsky about a condition that affects a growing number of students with severe anxiety: school avoidance. 

“It was almost like a revelation,” she told USA TODAY.

There’s no book on this, it’s not spoken about. It’s very scary and parents feel a sense of helplessness.

School avoidant behavior, also called school refusal, is when a school-age child refuses to attend school or has difficulty being in school for the entire day. Several mental health experts told USA TODAY it has become a crisis that has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There's no book on this, it's not spoken about," said Demsky, whose son declined to be interviewed by USA TODAY but gave his mother permission to share their story. "It's very scary and parents feel a sense of helplessness." 

The two continued to struggle with school avoidance for four years with little guidance. In 2014, she created a website to offer families the help and support she couldn't find. The site eventually turned into the School Avoidance Alliance , which spreads awareness and educates learning facilities and families of school avoidant children.

School avoidance is not a concrete diagnosis and looks different in every child. Some students consistently miss a couple of days a week, while others may leave during the day or escape to the nurse or counselor’s office. In some extreme cases, students don't step foot in a school for months or years at a time.

Half a dozen family members and students told USA TODAY that school avoidance has affected not only their mental health, often leading to anxiety and depression, but also their family dynamics, relationships with fellow students, and grades. It has threatened their prospects of graduation and a thriving future.

School avoidance is a complicated condition that neither parents nor school systems are fully equipped to handle. Some experts say school systems and national organizations are beginning to come up with strategies to get kids back to school, while others wonder if there's a better answer.

"Our waiting list is like 180 families right now," said Jonathan Dalton, a licensed psychologist who runs the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change in Maryland and Virginia, which offers treatment to those affected by anxiety and other related disorders, including school avoidance. "The mental health infrastructure was never designed for this level of need."

‘Anxiety and avoidance are teammates’

In the passenger seat of her mother’s car, Anna saw the school slowly peek above the horizon. Her heart began racing, her body shaking. Her breathing grew shallow and fast. And then, the unmistakable sign of her panic attacks: her hand smacking her leg.

“It’s scary because it’s not voluntary at all. It’s just kind of happening to you,” said Anna, a Virginia college student who spoke on the condition that she not be fully named because of mental health stigma. “I’ll sit in the car and tell myself to go in, but my body won’t carry me inside.”

Anna, who was school-avoidant in 10th grade, said her school avoidance began spiraling after she recovered from a medical condition. Despite getting better, she hadn't been to school in a month, and the mere thought of returning generated anxiety.

For most students, mental health experts say, school avoidance is typically a symptom of a bigger problem: anxiety.

“Anxiety and avoidance are teammates because they work on the same function,” Dalton said. “Kids feel very uncomfortable when they go to school or think about going to school, so they do what evolution teaches them to do and avoid something that makes them scared.”

Anxiety may be a common thread, but the basis of that fear varies with each student, said R. Meredith Elkins, program co-director of the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts.

The mental health infrastructure was never designed for this level of need.

School avoidant behaviors most often occur in the transition between elementary, middle school and high school, she said.

“In younger children, we’re more likely to see school avoidance motivated by separation anxiety,” Elkins said. “As kids get older and their social environment changes, the way they interact with peers becomes important, and we see social anxiety as a more frequent contributor.”

School avoidance also tends to be a gradual process – starting with missing a day or two, then missing a week until the student becomes school avoidant altogether. The longer a student is away from school, the harder it is to get them back into school, and it can affect other aspects of their life, like relationships and work opportunities, Dalton said.

“We don’t call it work refusal, we call it unemployment,” he said. “If (students avoid school) and gain short-term relief, they’ll become a master of avoidance, and that doesn’t play well for the future.”

‘This is a crisis,’ and COVID made school avoidance worse

Some research suggests as few as 1% of students are school avoidant, while organizations like the School Avoidance Alliance estimate 5% to 28% of students in the country exhibit school avoidant behaviors at some point in their lives.

“How (school avoidance) is defined is nebulous,” Dalton said. “Different organizations use different language and criteria to describe it.”

Though it’s unclear how many students are affected, mental health experts agree the problem has gotten significantly worse since the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools began reintegrating in-person learning, many students didn’t return to the classroom.

In some cases, the pandemic halted the progress of many school avoidant students who were making a slow reentry. In other cases, experts said, the pandemic accelerated school refusal.

“We saw a larger shift in kids who were on the cusp before and then after COVID started refusing completely,” said Krystina Dawson, a school psychologist and mental health supervisor in Fairfield County, Connecticut. “Once the pandemic hit and we introduced remote learning, kids got comfortable in their homes.”

School refusal cases may have also grown as students report experiencing anxiety at record levels. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found adolescents experiencing anxiety or depression increased by one-third from 2016 to 2020. The same report also found access to mental health services worsened during the pandemic.

“A lot of school refusers, when March 2020 happened, they were like, ‘Welcome to my world,’” Dalton said. “This was these kids’ lives.”

Experts say it has been more difficult to get students to return to school as they become accustomed to learning and socializing virtually. Some parents are more likely to be home throughout the day working remotely, which makes it easier for school avoidant children to stay home.

“The family dynamics have changed,” Dawson said. “Sometimes now there is one parent staying at home, which can be enticing for a child.”

‘Unless you've been through it, you don’t understand’

Katherine and her son Peter started nearly every morning crying together in the school parking lot. The tears were hot and flowing.

They always drove to the building with hopes he would make inside. But eventually the pair headed home, longing the next day would be better.

His school avoidance peaked in 2021 during seventh grade. Katherine, who who lives just outside Boston, spoke on the condition that she not be fully identified because of the stigma associated with mental health.

Katherine identified her son’s affliction after a Google search led her to the School Avoidance Alliance, where she educated herself and found solidarity in the organization's Facebook group. But she still found little empathy or understanding among friends, family and peers, she said.

Her son would say, "‘I just want to be normal.’ It was heartbreaking,” she told USA TODAY. “As a parent, it is so isolating. It is so lonely because unless you’ve been through it, you don’t understand.”

The family struggled for years to find the origin of Peter’s anxiety until he was finally diagnosed with pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, or PANS, which is a sudden onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms typically linked to an infection, according to Nemours Children’s Health.

With the help of treatment and counseling, Peter is now a freshman in high school and goes to school most days. Katherine was able to secure an individualized education plan for her son, but others are not so lucky. 

There’s shame, blame, and parents also don’t know how to deal with the schools. It’s a huge maze.

“There’s shame, blame, and parents also don’t know how to deal with the schools,” Demsky said. “It’s a huge maze.”

Some educators don't take school avoidance seriously, families told USA TODAY. Schools sometimes threaten students' graduation or take students to family court. 

The students who spoke to USA TODAY said that while they know some educators may view them as truant or misbehaving, they understand they’re missing educational milestones and experiences, and they want to return to school. But many of the schools’ solutions seem to only fuel their depression and anxiety.

"We had the resources, and it was still incredibly difficult" to treat Peter's school avoidance, Katherine said. "That's just not OK." 

‘Avoidance ruins lives’

Educators and psychologists say the goal for every case of school avoidance is to get the child back into class.

It’s important for students to stop using avoidance as a coping strategy before it becomes their primary way of dealing with problems for the rest for their lives, Dalton said.

“I don’t treat anxiety. I don’t have to treat anxiety because anxiety is temporary and harmless,” Dalton said. “What I treat is avoidance, and avoidance ruin lives.”

Others also argue returning to in-person class is important for social development.

“You’re increasing the diversity of exposure to social interactions that is difficult to replicate at home because there are some things that are uncontrolled at school that benefits your social development,” said Na’im Madyun, a school psychologist at Prince George County Public Schools in Maryland. “You’re more informed about how to navigate those nuances when you develop.”

But there’s no standard guidance how how to get kids back in the classroom, which leaves school officials to come up with their own solutions.

“It really takes a team approach,” said Mara Nicastro, head of Nora School, a small college preparatory school in Silver Spring, Maryland. “We work in conjunction with the family and the therapist ... and talk about what is it that can help make this transition smooth because the student is ready and knows it’s time to find a space to move forward.”

It really takes a team approach. We work in conjunction with the family and the therapist ... and talk about what is it that can help make this transition smooth.

Before making that leap, Dalton said most school avoidant students undergo a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy to understand what exactly the student is avoiding and gradually build their tolerance to that source of anxiety. This may look like staying in the car at the school parking lot or walking into the guidance counselor’s office and leaving.

Parents with anxiety have difficulty guiding their children in uncomfortable situations, Dalton said, as they reckon with their own traumas related to school. But it's important to seek help.

Schools need to work with parents and therapists to make the appropriate accommodations, Nicastro added. 

“We recognize that our students are learning how to move through their discomfort, their anxiety, and give them opportunities to use those coping strategies.”

Looking forward: What’s being done to help students?

Experts say not all schools – especially large districts – have the resources to operate like the Nora School, which limits enrollment to 70 students.

Many schools don’t reach the American School Counselor Association recommended counselor-to-student ratio of 1 to 250. The average ratio across all schools is 1 to 464, according to the association , and nearly 3 million of those students don’t have access to other school support staff, like a school psychologist or social worker.

But experts say things are slowly changing. For example, the Biden administration announced Monday nearly $100 million will be awarded across 35 states to increase access to school-based mental health services through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was signed into law June 2022.

Meanwhile, school systems and professional organizations are engaged in a national conversation about school avoidance and related protocols, said Duncan Young, CEO of Effective School Solutions, a mental health services provider for K-12 school districts.

Some protocols have been implemented and include a social-emotional curriculum, mental health counseling and personalized care for students whose mental health challenges impede their ability to operate in a traditional school setting.

“We’re seeing this transition right now,” Young said. Instead of viewing school avoidance as a behavioral problem, “school districts are building their mental health literacy and understanding the linkage between school avoidance and mental health.”

Meanwhile, some families question the rigid structure of a traditional school system.

Katie, a mother of three who lives in the St. Louis area in Illinois, said her high-school-age son was school-avoidant, but his mental health has significantly improved after transitioning full time to remote learning.

“He’s much healthier,” Katie said, who is on the school board and spoke on the condition that she not be fully identified. “He’s participating in schoolwork, he’s socializing, he’s attending family dinners again, his depression is so much better, anxiety is so much better.” He's also working and visiting colleges with plans to continue his education.

Experts urge families to seek professional help through a doctor, therapist or school counselor if anxiety becomes debilitating enough that it affects daily life, relationships and job, or if someone is having thoughts of hurting themselves or others. If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, dial 988 to reach someone with Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. They're available 24 hours a day and provide services in multiple languages.

In the real world, most people can choose whom they work for or where they go to college, she noted. But students don't have that flexibility in a traditional school system.

"Children have not always been educated in this one little box," Katie said. "Whatever that looks like for (my son), I have all the faith in the world that he will be successful one day. I don’t question it for a second anymore."

Despite avoiding school for four years, Demsky's son graduated, secured a job and manages his anxiety independently, she said. She hopes her story comforts other parents and shows that children can have productive lives after school avoidance.

"I had that fear that my son was going to live in my basement for the rest of his life. ... That is the fear of every parent," Demsky said. Now, her son is "thriving."

"I'm really proud of him." 

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT. 

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.