Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on High School Students from Their Own Perspectives: A Guest Blog from Millennium Brooklyn High School

By, Vilma Argueta, Sophia Loughran, Graham Vonnegut and Mitchell Basin Kozhkokar

Introduction

The impact of COVID-19 on education has been detrimental throughout the last couple of years for students and teachers alike. We decided to dive deeper on these issues that arose during the pandemic through research, interviews, collecting artifacts and observations. As a team we conducted an interview with Dr. Wilcox to gain greater knowledge on the topic as a whole, and to hear the experience of an expert on the topic. Throughout the pandemic, schools were shifted towards remote learning which created a lack of motivation and decrease in students’ mental health around the country. This has affected students until this day in trying to adapt to these circumstances. Across the board we can see disruptions in students ranging from all grades. For example, motor skills in elementary schools, lack of development in relationships with both high schoolers and middle schoolers, and a loss of self with university students.

Motivation

When schools first went online it sent shock waves throughout the world. I (Sophia) personally suffered from a lack of motivation and boredom. Picture that you are in the 8th grade and it is your last year of middle school. You already have what some call the “senior blues”, and then in the middle of the school year a pandemic hits. Research studies that have been conducted show students are likely to be less motivated when they feel anxious or depressed, and this will severely lower their academic performances. Similarly, if students feel that they do not belong at their campus or have a lack of connection, they will be less motivated. Lack of motivation in students heightens depression and anxiety, decreases sense of belonging, and lowers academic performance. Lack of motivation especially affects university students, more-so when it is their first year and they have not been on the campus grounds. Across many different research findings of our own there is a common theme that because of COVID-19, many students are feeling a lack of motivation. That can escalate into psychological and academic related issues. Lack of motivation is like the umbrella of a topic and has many consequences.

Students of lower-income families have especially been hit hard by this pandemic, as most schooling was remote and not all students had the resources needed to succeed. It is proven when students do not have the correct resources to succeed their motivation will drop. This is exactly what happened during this time period, ranging from elementary to university students all sharing common themes.

You might be asking why there is this common drop of lack of motivation between students, this has many complex and different answers including how the student viewed school in the past. Students who, before the pandemic did not achieve or strive for academic success were more likely to suffer from conditions like mental health decline and motivation loss.

Mental Health

Many children/ students are having mental health problems due to COVID-19. There are many ways that it affects their mental state during this time of the crisis. Although some students during virtual learning didn’t feel safe at home, they were exposed to varied types of abuses. Even if most of it was just screen time and being more relaxed during quarantine (including with the lack of supervision over internet access and vulnerability to online offenders), students may attempt fraud and may access websites that may be out of topic. It’s important to talk about these things that took place during this point in time at home for students. This leads to ways in which during virtual learning many students weren’t secure in ways of education and mental health. This may be one of the reasons why it led students in ways that it impacted their mental health during COVID.

Conclusions

The pandemic has hit the education system with new twists and turns from the last 10 years. Students around the world have been negatively affected by the pandemic with experiencing mental health issues and a lack of motivation.

Students were challenged by having to adapt to remote learning which caused students to be affected by losing key celebrations and social skills. Specifically, students from lower-income families suffered as they did not have the resources to properly learn.

Many people have suffered from learning gaps that then caused decreases in their mental well-being and their motivation. Through all these occurrences we hope that researchers and educators will become more understanding towards situations that may have huge impacts on students.

The NYKids team thanks the Millennium Brooklyn High School authors for their thoughtful contribution above. For more insight into the ways the pandemic has impacted the education system, we encourage you to learn more about our research at https://ny-kids.org/. As always, we invite you to reach out with any questions via nykids@albany.edu. Additionally, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.