Online learning has affected such a vast amount of people, from children to teens to teachers; we've all been through the wringer. A learning deficit has swept the globe and our county, and has left teachers scrambling. Now, schools are back in person in Humboldt County and the learning deficit is being felt with full force. While trying to get students back on track, covid is seen lurking in the corner, ready to strike when we least expect it, and to send us all back online. We all see it. It’s an unexplained empty desk or a flurry of contact tracing forms bombarding a classroom. Yet we try to ignore it. We try to pretend that we are safe from this disease, but the truth is that we are not. Just in the age group of 5-17, more than 800,000 cases of covid-19 have been reported in California. 1,600 of these cases, aged 10-19, were reported in Humboldt County alone, a staggering number compared to the beginning of the pandemic.

Schools in Humboldt closed March 13th, 2020, an unforgettable day for all of us here in Humboldt. We were all told that this break in school would be “just like a longer spring break.” Little did we know the chaos that would ensue. Online, students failed to pay attention to class; a study showing that “49 percent [of students] said the use of technology for reasons not related to class, or ‘off-task’ use, was distracting to them.” Teachers were left to teach to a black screen, where they didn't even know if students were listening. Students fell behind, and in Sonoma County, “37 percent of students across 10 districts had at least one failing grade, compared with 27 percent last year.” Schools remained in this online void until a year later, when they entered a new phase, hybrid learning. Rebbecca Baugh, a science teacher at EHS, remembers having half of her class conduct a lab in person while she would go around the room with her online students, trying to explain the concepts that only in-person learning could really demonstrate. A study published by the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) showed that “students who didn’t engage in hands-on learning were 1.5 times more likely to fail a course than students who did,” which partially explains why so many students fell behind over the pandemic. This method of teaching was still better than online learning, but not enough for the kids left online. Many students opted not to come back in person, often because they still had fears about the pandemic or because they were preoccupied in their own home taking care of their siblings. These students who stayed home during this time were often the ones struggling the most, and schools were left worried.

In the 2021/2022 school year, classes went back in person. This is what everyone wanted, wasn't it? Yet many students were trying to stay online, and many were stressed about coming back. After more than a year of online learning, what would in person school feel like? Teachers, like Mrs Polizzi, were concerned about their safety at school. They had to worry about things that they never had to before. Even simple things like “bringing handwritten work home” were avoided because of the risk of bringing covid into their homes. Even without concerns of covid, schools had to worry about getting students caught back up.

The learning deficit was a real danger from online learning, and now teachers were seeing it directly. Mrs. Polizzi saw this year as an “uphill battle,” battling both covid and new behavioral problems with her students. She has seen countless students with “an inability to cope with conflict and the inability to conduct themselves in a mature manner.” Besides these behavioral problems that have emerged from the pandemic, a lack of “major writing skills” has been observed by teachers like Mrs. Polizzi. This has led the leadership in the school district to ask teachers to “lower or moderate their expectations of students.” Teachers have been forced to reteach these basic writing skills, all of which were supposed to grow through the years, not falter.

With this said, schools and teachers are doing their absolute best to win the battle against the learning deficit and covid. A teacher from Eureka High School believes that “even though it has been an uphill battle against covid, I think overwhelmingly we are handling it well.” So what have schools in Humboldt County been doing to fight the ravenous monster of covid? Well, according to a statement on the Eureka City Schools website, “all students in all grade levels are required to wear face masks.” This measure, a controversial one, is extremely effective according to a study that “found that face masks were 79% effective in preventing transmission.” Teachers like Mrs. Polizzi are also doing more step by step work, trying to help students grow a little at a time, to get back where they used to be. This focused curriculum is also now supplemented with an extra 12 minutes of school a day, which is meant to aid the regrowth of basic skills. Is this all sustainable though? The next generation of adults is growing up needing help with basic things like emotional control and curriculum that they learned years in the past. Once these students move into the workforce, how will they have the skills to cope? Only time will tell.