Sophomores face effects of starting high school during Covid.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Placer High School Leadership.
Class of 2024.
April 22, 2022
With Covid affecting every possible aspect of students’ lives, the sophomore graduating class of 2024 was the first class to start their high school years in full swing of distance learning. Even as schools slowly transition back to normal, the effects of Covid learning continue to have an impact on today’s sophomores.
Many would argue that your freshman year lays the foundation for the rest of your high school career and is crucial in navigating the new changes from middle school to high school. The class of 2024 did not have this experience available to them and as a result, have had to take on their sophomore year in a similar position to the new class of freshmen.
One sophomore, Kyle Vernon, shared that the transition made it feel like, “I was going into high school as a sophomore.”
The shift from elementary class schedules to a high school block schedule is difficult in itself without the added pressure of being online and separated from your teacher and peers. Straight A students saw their grades suffer like never before and attending classes every day became a constant struggle.
Sophomore Emma Nyal shared that she “saw a massive change in my grades when we switched to distance learning. Part of it was not being motivated enough to actually want to do school while not being physically in the classroom and the other half was not being able to understand over the computer.”
Whereas some students were able to adapt to distance learning and found that it worked better for them than regular school, this was not the case for the majority of students. Both teachers and students found it challenging to make distance learning engaging and school very quickly turned into something that students dreaded daily.
While adjusting to online school and the faster pace of high school classes, the class of 2024 was also forced to juggle trying to meet new people and socially transition from middle school friendships to high school friendships.
Sophomore Rachel Edwards spoke of her experience and shared, “Socially it was hard because my parents didn’t let me go anywhere so school was my only connection besides Facetime and Snapchat.” She went on to explain that beginning high school online impacted her ability to meet new people. “I’ve only started my sophomore year making friends because we were all online. Everyone always had their cameras off because we were too scared to have them on. It was super hard to talk to anyone.”
Many sophomores shared that they have had a much better experience this year than last year in making friends, meeting new people, and feeling more a part of our high school community.
Throughout all of the schedule changes and Covid protocols, sophomores only attended in-person school regularly for less than a third of the year. However, as sophomores continue out their first full year of high school on campus they are finally able to begin their high school experience in a normal sense.
