COVID-19’s Hindrance to Elementary Education
Every aspect of ordinary life has been altered by the coronavirus pandemic. However, its impact on the next generation might be the most striking change.
Virtual learning versus in person is drastically different. Especially for kids at the elementary level. Therefore, returning to the classroom became the number one priority for educators ever since COVID-19 arrived. But unfortunately, it’s now two years into the pandemic and the educational aftermath has already proven to be legitimate.
“With learning, you need to see people talk and watch their mouth move, you know, do the movements of sounding out vocabulary and learning letters,” Jessica Freund said, a student-teacher for Marlboro Elementary School. “These kids are not going to be learning as much, especially without social and emotional learning.”
Masks are what allow students and teachers to remain in person, yet they also hinder the learning experience at the same time.
“It’s better to be in person than online,” Freund said. However, the lasting effects of masking and COVID at such a young age are issues that cannot be ignored.
Marlboro Elementary School requires their students to be masked at all times, though they do allow plenty of student-to-student interactions, along with mask breaks to help relieve some of the pressure on these children.
Masking, social distancing and the entire pandemic have become completely normalized. It is a sad realization, but this is the way education is conducted today. Students may not love the idea, but they are compliant because despite all the controversies involving this virus, being in-person will always be an improvement over virtual learning.
“They really are amazing by not complaining, listening and following directions because they’re done sitting in front of computers,” fourth-grade teacher Mary Guerriero said. It is a collective effort by everyone to get through this pandemic, and while there are detrimental aspects to overcome, staying resilient is vital for our youth.
Children in elementary school have grown up in a post-COVID environment; this is all they know, which may contribute to their compliance compared to those even in middle or high school.
According to a first-grade teacher at Marlboro Elementary School, teaching at the early stages of education is very challenging because kindergarten is not required. “Everybody kind of starts out on a different playing field. And with wearing the masks, it’s very hard to teach reading and how to say sounds.” The teacher reiterated the importance of mouth movements and the difficulty of connecting with students when both sides have their faces covered.
Moving back to in-person class was a major step to getting the school back to how it used to be. However, the switch to virtual learning for such an extended period of time led to a massive downturn in the social and cognitive skills of many of the students.
“I feel like we’ve regressed almost two years. My incoming third-graders are acting like first-graders because they haven’t had a mature opportunity to interact with students with the last year and a half being online,” physical education teacher Rory Becker said.
Children at the elementary level are very impressionable to their surrounding environment, therefore when young kids are surrounded by screens all day, instead of other students and teachers, their behavior does not develop the same way. Elementary school is not only necessary to learn the basics of reading, writing and math, but to build friendships, mature through trial and error and ultimately evolve from a child to an adolescent.
It is frightening how normal COVID protocol has become, as it will be our youth who feel the real repercussions of this pandemic.
