COVID-19 Pandemic Turns Students Worlds Upside-down

It is well known that the COVID-19 pandemic has horribly impacted America over the past year. With that being said, it is hard to imagine that COVID-19 could have impacted anything, more than our education system.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the educational landscape has changed drastically without a return to normalcy in sight. One of the school district’s impacted the most by the pandemic, is the New York City public school system.The shift in learning styles began March 16, 2020. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that all New York City public schools would be shutting down as COVID-19 cases continued to soar in New York City. “This is a decision I have taken with no joy and a lot of pain,” De Blasio said as he made the announcement. Mayor De Blasio stated that schools would be closed until April 20 and then he’ll revaluate from there. Since then, it has been a challenge for the New York City public school system to combat the pandemic. Mayor De Blasio elected to keep schools closed for the remainder of the school year, with hopes to welcome students back in the fall. However, after reopening in September, New York City was forced to close all buildings again, and resort to remote learning on November 19, 2020.

During this time, students were forced to adjust to distance learning. Gary A. Berg is an Associate Vice President and Dean at California State University. Berg describes distance learning as “a form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication.”

According to Berg, in most cases, distance learning is used on nontraditional students such as full-time workers, nonresidents, or students in the Military. However, in the midst of a global pandemic, the education system is relying on distance learning more than ever before. In fact, according to a study conducted by the U.S Census Bureau in August 2020, “Nearly 93% of people in households with school-age children reported their children engaged in some form of ‘distance learning’ from home.”

Students attempted to make the best of their situations, as they hoped that it would only be temporally. Unfortunately, with no solution in sight, frustrations began to rise in students.

Jessica Davis is a senior at Howard University who was forced to spend her final year remotely, after her university made the decision to not to offer in person classes. Davis shared her opinion remote learning.

“Honestly, I hate it. It feels like my classes aren’t even about learning anymore, the only purpose is just handing in assignments. Not to mention, most of my classes are asynchronous, meaning I have to teach myself, and turn in my assignments on time,” Davis said

Next, Davis reflected on why she believes that remote learning is more challenging than traditional learning.

“Remote learning presents multiple challenges that you wouldn’t face in a traditional learning style,” Davis said. “The first is that you feel as if you are teaching yourself which can be very difficult to do for more than one class. The next reason is, having to keep up with all of your assignments can be difficult remotely. You have nobody reminding you what is due when, and it becomes easy to miss or forget about an assignment. The most challenging obstacle to overcome is technical difficulties. Sometimes your internet is down, or your computer isn’t working, when these things happen, there is nothing you can do. Most of the time, technical difficulties will result in you missing class, or failing to turn in an assignment on time,” Davis said.

Lastly, Davis spoke on how she felt about spending her senior year at home.

“It makes me sad. I loved college so much and loved all three of my years at Howard University. To have it end like this, without even being able to have a graduation is heartbreaking,” Davis said.

It is clear that remote learning has greatly impacted the way that students learn. It’ll be interesting to see how students continue to cope with distance learning for the remainder of this pandemic.