Five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, you hear many people say, “It’s so nice to be back to normal.” However, I often wonder what that definition of “normal” is. We may not have millions of adults without jobs anymore, but there are definitely financial stressors, as grocery prices have skyrocketed and income levels have plummeted; these have caused other mental health pressures inside our homes that I am sure have trickled down onto students’ mental health as well.
When our kids went back to school, to say “there was anxiety in the air” is probably putting it lightly. There was not only anxiety on the part of parents, teachers, and administrators, but you can imagine the amount of fear and concerns our children felt as they returned to the classroom. The initial shocks around re-entry into the classroom was mostly around the children’s physical health, as administrator Terri Miller found when only half of her 4th and 5th grade Whitehall (PA) students returned to the Zephyr building that year and the other half remained online. That falls in line with an analysis done by the Associated Press where 50,000 children in 22 states were still missing from schools in fall of 2022. This was an improvement from the previous 230,000 children missing from schools in the fall of 2021, but nonetheless indicates that thousands of children have experienced multi-year disruptions to their education following the COVID-19 school closures. Terri also notes that we use the term “long COVID” a lot when we talk about the elderly; however, there was undoubtedly a “long-term COVID” mental health effect that we are still seeing in our youth.
Healing Magazine interviewed several other school staff members and asked them what they did in their classrooms for their students’ mental health post-COVID-19:
At Parkland High School near Allentown (PA), art teacher Alyssa Tauber found that by allowing her students to incorporate Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into their pieces and adding life lessons into their art, they could express themselves and bring realness into the classroom. In addition, Alyssa added daily check-ins with her students focused solely on the student’s mental health. This allows the students the ability to open back up to the idea of talking to one another, and to how others are feeling (including their teacher); they then can start the class with an open and fresh mind. Alyssa noted that she noticed many students leaning toward the arts post-COVID as a way to help manage their mental health. Many students told her that art was a tool they used to keep them busy and take their minds off stress during the pandemic.
On the flip side of things, when it comes to mental health in her kindergarten classroom at East Penn School District’s Willow Lane Elementary School (Macungie, PA), teacher Marisa Ziegler felt very well equipped to handle these concerns as she is Student Assistance Program (SAP) certified. In addition, teachers are “by default” the first line of defense when it comes to mental health, so she makes sure to address these situations with her students first-hand. She also increased Social Emotional Learning instruction in her teaching space to help her students develop the skills they need to be successful. Many students are coming to the classroom unable to work together, take turns and share, which are key skills that need to be learned at this level. Marisa uses SEL in the classroom to help students develop the ability to build relationships and make responsible decisions in the classroom. In addition, technology changed dramatically post-COVID and educators needed to learn how to adjust their instruction from fully in-person to fully online in a very short period of time. They had to learn how to remain flexible and open-minded, which helped them and their students adapt to new technology within the classroom.
In addition to meeting with teachers and administrators, we talked with counselors who also noted a decline in student mental health as well as their intellectual development. For example, fourth and fifth-grade psychologist Michelle Beck reports how students came back from the pandemic with “elementary minds in middle school bodies,” still needing help with regulating their emotions and their ability to cope with certain situations and struggles, despite the best efforts of parents and caregivers during the pandemic. In hindsight, we probably should have done some more education on the mental health aspect around self-regulation and coping strategy training for all kids and made it part of our curriculum. However, so much of the immediate focus was on filling the academic gaps that will need to be addressed with the children for many years to come.
Travis Wuchter, a counselor at Liberty High School (Bethlehem, PA), works at a “trauma-informed” school which is more proactive regarding identification and treatment of students’ mental health concerns. Travis also mentions that Liberty has a wellness center within the school which makes students’ access to services much easier and allows for “frequent sharing of information.”
All in all, data indicates that students’ mental health has suffered significantly since the pandemic, and academic performance has been negatively affected, particularly among students who endured prolonged periods of remote learning. In addition, 32% of public-school students on average were reported to be behind grade level at the end of the 2023-24 school year, which is not significantly different from June 2022. On the bright side, average daily attendance rate for all public schools during the 2023-24 school year was up to 90% – which means that most (if not almost all) of our students are back in person and learning face to face.
This will be a long journey before we are “back to normal” but we are well on our way to getting our youth’s mental health issues back in check with the help of everyone at we have in our reach.
“The windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror for a reason. What’s in front of you is so much more important that what’s behind you.” – Jelly Roll (Jason Ford)
