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Lessons from the not-so-normal school year

Nicole Fallert   Paste BN

Ashley Soto is grateful she finally has glasses. The grade schooler from Alexandria, Virginia, was finally able to get a vision screening at school this year. Vision exams, along with many other elements of the in-person learning experience disappeared when COVID-19 stalled the American education system, hurling students and educators into an unprecedented online world.

Soto was in kindergarten when the pandemic hit. Now an exiting third grader, she's finally attending school in person. Glasses aside, the return hasn't been easy. Speaking with Paste BN reporter Alia Wong, she expressed she wants to grasp so much new information but often feels like it's too much.

“My brain is about to explode!” she told Wong after a full day of school.

👋 Hi there, I'm Nicole Fallert, author of Your Week, a column just for Paste BN subscribers like you. This week, Wong shared her insights after months of reporting from America's post-pandemic classrooms.

But first, don't miss these stories made possible by your Paste BN subscription (and keep scrolling for more reads!):

What an American school day looks like post-COVID

When national achievement scores in 2022 indicated America's students were falling behind in education goals, Wong and fellow reporter Kayla Jimenez wondered what the statistics meant in real life.

"We knew the pandemic had this unprecedented impact on the education system," Wong said. "Now that students are back in school full time for the first time in three years, in this backdrop of learning loss, what does learning look like now?"

With Wong in northern Virginia and Jimenez in the San Francisco area, the pair set out to find the answer. Over the last nine months, they have conducted copious interviews and dedicated hours to observing students, teachers and school officials.

Their reporting shows that − more than three years after the COVID outbreak began − some children are thriving, while many remain severely behind. This reality means recovering from COVID could be more costly, time consuming and difficult than schools, education leaders and policymakers anticipated, leaving a generation of young people struggling to catch up.

One of the biggest challenges at the start of the project was building relationships with schools, Wong said. She and Jimenez spent the first few months of the 2022 school year taking notes at schools and documenting all they could before conducting formal interviews.

After that initial research, the pair reflected on common themes they noticed related to the achievement gap, specifically mental health needs, behavioral challenges, chronic absenteeism and staff shortages, Wong said.

"[We] spent from dawn to dusk with these people," Wong said. Her Apple Watch recorded thousands of steps by the end of a day following Soto's third grade class or a principal's ever-changing responsibilities.

In a unique approach, Wong and Jimenez asked many of the people they interviewed to keep a journal during the school year. From a young teacher partnered with Teach for America to the children learning, the written responses deepened their understanding of school life today.

"There's something really evocative about hand writing," Wong said. "We really tried to get into their shoes and their heads to humanize how challenging and how gratifying it is to work and be in a school right now."

Wong's conversations with Soto were some of her most memorable. She recalls sitting outside the school on a bench near the baseball field and hearing the third grader reflect on why this school year is special, glasses included. Soto explained why she keeps missing school, a trend Wong and Jimenez noticed among many students. Her mother is a single parent with three kids, juggling precarious cleaning work that makes it difficult for her to get the children to school.

"Ashley was really describing all of this from her own point of view, and it really powerfully described how complex the needs are of students right now," Wong said. "People had taken for granted the beauties and simple pleasures of school that have nothing to do with reading and math. It's about the emotional development and the ability to enjoy life."

Dig deeper into the not-so-normal year

Thank you

I can't sign off this newsletter without wishing all of you a restful and enjoyable Father's Day. Whether you're a parent yourself or want to celebrate those who care for you, I hope it's a special day to relax and connect. Thank you for supporting our journalism with your subscription. Our work wouldn't be possible without you. 

Thank you,

Nicole

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