The pandemic showed us that students who don’t thrive on campus can thrive when they are allowed more freedom, leeway and sleep. It can be fraught with anxiety inducing moments and situations which too often lead to physical or verbal bullying and students feeling pressure to “fit in” or “look good”. While remote learning comes with many downsides for both students and teachers, we can’t pretend in-person learning is a bed of roses for everyone. While that continued for some districts during the pandemic, some school leaders worked to lighten the academic load a bit during this very trying time. That put a lot of pressure on the whole school ecosystem, especially students.
Teachers, as well, have come under increasing scrutiny to prepare students to hit benchmarks on standardized testing. Teachers were pushed to push students harder According to a Pew Research Center study, teens cite academic pressure as the top pressure they face. Research has found that students who are over-committed are more likely to experience unhealthy anxiety levels. In normal times, some kids were overscheduled Students engage in a variety of ways, and the flexibility to make their own hours allowed students a chance to exercise, take breaks, or even be bored, all of which research shows is beneficial.Īnother reason some students are thriving is, without extracurricular activities such as sports and social activities, they had more time for schoolwork. The remote learning experiment gave us new insights But for some students, it’s what they need to do to be able to participate in learning. Fidgeting, turning off the camera, or moving around during class meetings can look like a lack of engagement. Live video classes may pose unique challenges for students who have difficulty with focus and distractibility, trouble managing sensory input, or increased anxiety about being “on display”.Īs a result, they may behave in ways that challenge the definition of engagement. While the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 8-10 hours a night for teens ages 12-18 and 12 hours for children ages 6-12, a pre-pandemic, 2018 study of high school students across 30 states found more than 70 percent of students were not getting enough sleep during the school year.
During the pandemic, most students were no longer rising to an early alarm clock. But during the pandemic, the schedules became more fluid, allowing students more choice over when and how they do their schoolwork. Most high school students start school at 8:00 a.m. So early morning starts mean most kids aren’t getting the sleep they need, and inflexible schedules just don’t work well for all kids. The biological clocks of kids don’t actually align with traditional school hours. One takeaway from remote learning is self-pacing. The mental health toll of distance learning has shown that childhood rates of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, rose sharply while kids were out of school. That said, while some teachers are reporting that a handful of their students-shy kids, hyperactive kids, highly creative kids-were doing better with remote learning, it’s clear that a larger number struggled to adapt. The mental health crisis in schools is real
Children are attending school remotely in full#
While we still don’t know what the full impact of remote learning will have on students, we do know that some students are doing better remotely than they ever did in person.Īnd these new stars are often the ones that haven’t been able to shine on campus. Now, throw in the loss of in-person social connections, and you’ve got a mental health crisis in the making for a lot of kids.īut it’s not that way for every child. How do you attend online school when you don’t have a computer or access to reliable internet? How do you concentrate when your dad is in the hospital with COVID or your mom has lost her job and is struggling to put food on the table?Īllowed unprecedented access into students homes via Zoom, educators have watched powerlessly as kids disappeared into jobs they’ve taken to support their families or to become full time caretakers to younger siblings and older, infirm relatives. Struggling students failed to engage with remote learning for a variety of reasons, some immediately practical and some due to do the impact the pandemic had on their home lives. Covid-19 has seen so many students struggle through remote learning, but a smaller number thrive.
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