Post-Pandemic Rebound
How the Covid Cohort is Doing Back in School
The 23 students in Ms. Aguiar’s second-grade classroom at California Elementary School in La Puente greets their visitor excitedly.
“You’re so pretty!”
“I like your shoes!”
“Are you our art teacher?”
“I like your keychain!”
I try my best to say thank you to the overflowing compliments while answering the questions of these curious kids, who walk past on their way to their seats, taking stock. Once the kids are settled into their tiny seats, Ms. Aguiar addresses their big questions. “This is Ms. Monze, and she is Savannah’s best friend.” They know that Savannah is Ms. Aguiar’s daughter, making me something like an instant celebrity in their eyes. They are ready to show me how well they can learn, unaware that their learning experience has been far from normal so far.
As second graders, these eager students are part of the first cohort to have entered the school system fully online back in the fall 2020. With this has come challenges, which the children don’t fully understand, as well as an overwhelming amount of happiness about the opportunties to have in-person friendships that the kids lived so long without, considering their young ages.
As Ms. Aguiar put it, “They don’t realize they’ve missed it, but we see that they missed two years of being the true social little beings they should be at that age, but this year, they’ve just soaked it up.”
The nurse’s office at California Elementary is just past the front desk. It is a busy spot, filled with children coming and going, taking care of an injured friend. A short, skinny boy is brought in by two girls and a much taller boy, who explains, “I was trying to aim for a ball and I accidentally kicked Francisco here, and it was my fault cause I couldn’t aim.”
Later, another group of four kids, panting from playing outside, escort their injured friend into the office. One of them worriedly says, “Neo cracked his neck and whenever we touch it, it hurts.” Neo quietly reassures them that he’s fine and wants to go back to class.
The school nurse, used to these daily occurrences, hands each injured kid a small ice pack and sends them off. Watching these kids care for each other in groups and even take responsibility for their actions makes it surreal to remember that these experiences are still fairly new to them. Yet, they’re doing a great job of being with each other.
Since returning to in-person learning, Ms. Aguiar has observed, “I see less problems on the playground because I think they’re just so happy to be at school together and they need it.”
I think they’re just so happy to be at school together and they need it.
The social distancing COVID-19 forced upon us caused great concern for socialization, not just among kids. But it was an even bigger worry for the young kids who hadn’t yet had the opportunity to experience in-person education, to meet and interact with others besides their families. The second-graders in Ms. Aguiar’s classroom seem ready and capable of grasping that social aspect and to be thriving with it.
Back in the classroom, Ms. Aguiar gives a preview for the next assignment. “We’re gonna be working in groups in a bit,” she says, to which the children respond, “Yay!”
Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much that the second graders wouldn’t respond with enthusiasm to. After being told to take out their highlighters, they roared, “Yay, we love highlighters!” The mention of Earth Day brought another round of “Yays!” Ms. Aguiar’s introduction of each art material available to use during their group project got its own “Yay!” the reminder that Thursday would be an early-release day, though, was met with a stifled, “Nooo!”
“I mean when the weekends come, they’re like, ‘No, we want to be here!’” Ms. Aguiar says.
During class time, the students sit with in-progress butterfly art projects on the edge of their desk along with their blue pencil boxes, full of crayons, school-sponsored №2 pencils, erasers, highlighters, and more. They sit haphazardly on their chairs, legs crossed in ways that couldn’t be comfortable, yet they do this as they lean over their desks, eyes wide as they wait for Ms. Aguiar has to say to about what they might learn next.
Though their regard for socializing and learning may actually have been elevated by being stuck in quarantine for so long, this generation spent kindergarten, their first true educational experience, meeting over Zoom, sometimes for just an hour or two a day. When they returned to campus for first grade, they faced health regulations that often interrupted the flow. Masks were mandated at many public schools initially and if a student exhibited any type of symptom, whether positive with COVID-19 or not, they were sent home for 10 days. The cumulative effect was that sometimes kids missed up to six weeks of classtime over the course of the school year. “There was a time when I remember I had seven kids in my class of 24 and it didn’t make sense to go on with the lessons,” recalls Ms. Aguiar.
Studies show that the extended inconsistencies in education during Covid has created gaps among children when it comes to learning in their reading, writing, and especially math skills.
On this school day, the kids are given a handout on oil in the ocean that is also displayed over the projector. It’s in honor of the upcoming Earth Day. As they start the assignment, Ms. Aguiar opens up the reading to the children. “Who would like to read us the problem?” About seven children raise their hands, nearly standing out of their seats. More kids raise their hands for the next question. “Who knows what this text feature is called?”
A girl with her hair tied in a little bun eagerly stomps on the ground shouting, “Ooo, me, me me me!” By the end of this series of questions, nearly the whole class is raising their hands, desperately wanting the satisfaction of possibly answering a question correctly, like their peers who have already been called on.
As might be expected, given the interruptions to their education, the kids’ enthusiasm is a bit ahead of their capacity. “Oil sticks to a bird’s feathers and makes them…” An initially animated boy trails off as he gets stuck on the line he volunteered to read. Ms. Aguiar finishes the sentence for him, “…heavy.”
Another girl with a soft, yet cheery voice, begins to stumble, too, “They can put a special…”. Ms. Aguiar once again comes to the rescue. “Break it up, babe, I-N is ‘in’, -ven, -tion.” The girl finishes the sentence with “invention.”
“I’m still seeing where the foundational skills that should have been built in kindergarten and first grade were not there yet even when the school year started in second grade” explains Ms. Aguiar.
A New York Times article, “Pandemic Learning Loss,” published in November 2022 elaborates. Looking at data compiled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Sarah Mervosh writes, “Nine year-olds lost the equivalent of two decades of progress of math and reading, according to an authoritative national test.”
This gaps evident even in Ms. Aguiar’s eager class are, unfortunately, occurring nationwide.
Spelling and reading are just the tip of the iceberg of these academic challenges. Since the beginning of the year, Ms. Aguiar realized that her students lacked proper addition skills and lacked an overall sense of their numbers. Again, this is not unique. According to a subsequent New York Times article published in January, students experienced a learning deficit that amounted to missing a third of a school year during the pandemic. The writer, Emily Baumgaertner, notes that some studies paint an even direr picture. “In the United States, one study showed that the average public elementary or middle school student lost the equivalent of a half-year of learning in math, and six percent of students were in districts that lost more than a full year.”
As her school day nears an end, Ms. Aguiar recalls that with only an hour left, “We have not done math in this classroom today,” which is greeted with some mischievous “Yays!” because apparently a class without math deserves a cheer.
The kids pull out their math workbooks and flip open to a page with pictures of analog clocks. What was just a classroom filled with confidence and joy, even through some missteps, now falls silent as Ms. Aguiar asks, “Do we remember what we call that hand?” as she motions to the shorter hour hand of the clock. After several moments, one brave girl volunteers an answer with a quiet voice, which turns out to be right.
“How proud I am of Jezianne who used to never raise her hand during math time but always raises her hand now!” Ms. Aguiar encourages. She has been working hard to salvage the students’ math abilities by working on different math skills every morning, which has been proving to be effective.
As exhausting as the last three years have been as an educator, I have probably felt more purposed in my job than ever before.
Unfortunately, by dedicating her morning to math skills, Ms. Aguiar has had to give up her usual intense focus on reading and writing. While this is apparent in the earlier mistakes made during the children’s reading, it has been an even bigger issue for second language learners, especially being at school in La Puente, which is heavily Latino. “I run in a Title I school where the kids have English as their second language, and so reading skills are always where our focus is to try and make sure that they are meeting the grade level standards,” Ms. Aguiar says.
Even with these struggles, the students still manage to have fun through a combination of personal drive and group collaboration. Ms. Aguiar notes this difference compared to previous years before COVID. “Even this year, with the kids who are struggling the most, I still see that desire that they’re just like, ‘No, I want to learn, I want to get this.’”
During the students’ group project, the long-haired boy struggling with his English now gets to work with other Spanish-speaking boys where they marvel about robots, Spiderman, and Ironman together. On an opposite table, there are two girls playing with each other’s hair, gushing about how pretty the other is. Across from them are two boys having a thumb wrestling match while spinning on their wobbly stools until one falls over and looks up to check if anyone witnessed that major loss.
Even with all of these challenges to work through, Ms. Aguiar confidently believes that as long as these academic gaps begin to close a little bit at a time, things should eventually even out, “As exhausting as the last three years have been as an educator, I have probably felt more purposed in my job than ever before.”
