Abstract

This essay is based in the Covid 19 effects on my past high school Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies. I provide notes of my observation in the school of three classes I was able to observe. In these notes I provide information of the things that I saw were new into the school after I graduated in 2020 such as its class setting and overall environment. I also described my thoughts and feelings while making these observations which were useful in the development of my essay. For my annotated bibliography instead of finding three online sources, I decided to interview a senior from the school to get a broader perspective in how schools have been managing the situation of covid 19 cases upon students. To better enhance this interview, I also provided two newsletter that strengthened mine and my interviews thoughts and feelings about the school. Lastly after my final essay, I also wrote a reflection based on my experience writing this paper and my final point of view on how CDC and the Department of Education need to work better together to improve school settings.

In Between the Walls

Many people believe that now after about a year of the pandemic, almost 2, things have gone back to normal. Schools have opened, people have their jobs again, and life just seems to go back to being normal. But have our public high schools in New York really gone back to normal? Do people really know how teachers and students are dealing with the traces of Covid-19? To answer these questions, I decided to visit and observe the high school I graduated from in 2020 when this all started, Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies in the Bronx. Usually, the school has about 300 students and from all five schools that take place we are in floor number two. Last time I was a student here classrooms looked clustered, bathrooms not as clean, lots of physical interactions between students and students and teachers, and of course no masks or vaccines required. Now all staff and students are required to wear their masks and getting the covid vaccine is being enforced, while students aren’t 100 percent required to be vaccinated, teachers were to obtain their full vaccination before the beginning of school. In the instance of entering the building it could be sensed that the environment and protocols of the school were different. I had to show an identification and fill out a form of one question asking if I was fully vaccinated or not, the DOE (department of education) requires all visitors to be fully vaccinated to enter the building. I was also asked this beforehand when I reached out to the assistant principal, Rachell Dennis, if I could go to do my observations.

The first class I was able to observe was Ms. Ardizzone’s English class consisting of seniors who were writing their college essays. Students were sat in rows of about 6 to 7 seats facing forward, but some or most seats in a few rows were empty while others were full. I was able to interview one of the students in the class, Freisaly Melo Rivas, a senior at the high school. She confessed that in classrooms teachers are not very strict when it comes to social distancing “they don’t have a rule you can sit wherever you want, you can sit close but not on the side, just in front. So, we need to face each other.”, however when I asked her about how safe she felt in school she declared “yes and no. Safe in a way of cleaning and looking after you, no because a lot of people do not follow the rules” referring to students. This concern is also stated by Pope (2020). In her article she expresses the idea that many of the things’ teachers are trying to incorporate in school may seem to be working at first, however over time it becomes somewhat impossible to control how exposed students are because they do not take the mask wearing as serious as teachers, or a teacher because of grouping, whether it happens because students want to socialize or for educational purposes. It is also determined that the C.D.C. is not very specific in the precautions that need to be made, they do not specify the precautions needed, so much that closing schools after one positive case does not ensure closing schools (Haddad 2020). In Morris there has been about 3 cases of positive results and the only steps they have taken is keeping the infected 2 weeks out of school and try their best to be informed to who the student was closest too to send them on quarantine as well. But have they ever thought of how the domino effect is how the virus spreads? “Is there a point where an outbreak is large enough that you would close the school? Again, guidelines are vague on this. The C.D.C. doesn’t make any concrete statements.” (Haddad 2020)

Another difficulty that came through my mind was mental health. I remember that when Covid started in my senior year, when we operated fully online students were assigned a specific teacher to meet with once a week in a group. In this meeting we were able to express our stresses or concerns, as well as academic struggles, and if things were a little too personal, we could speak in private with the teachers after everyone else left the meeting. But what about now that things have shifted to in person? During the end of my observation in the algebra 2 class of Ms. Cover I saw that students were to meditate in the last 10 minutes of class before going to lunch by listening to sounds of nature though a speaker offered to teachers. The problem I noticed about this time of meditation is that the teacher was very confused on how to proceed with the meditation and students were not meditating at all. “They do not have any kind of support, they only have some time of meditation before lunch, but it is not helpful. The teachers don’t know what they are doing, and students are unclear of the point of it.” says Freisaly. And when it comes to students been checked by a teacher as before when school was synchronous, it is not happening anymore. In other words, is like giving therapy to students without the proper therapeutic procedures.

Teachers are struggling, they do not know what they are doing, but also, they have work on top coming from higher authorities. So, who is it to blame? The answer to this is the school districts and politicians (Pope 2020). One because teachers are required to handle two styles of teaching, both technological and classroom and second continuing tests and teacher evaluations as if the school year is “just an ordinary school year”. Then how are students and teachers really dealing with the traces of Covid-19? Simple, teachers doing what they think is best while having the whole department of education on their shoulders making them go about work as if it were and ordinary school year, students not receiving the mental/emotional support that they need, and both being highly exposed to covid-19 because it is impossible to control social distance of students in or outside of school.

 

Annotated Bibliography

Pope D. (2020) Covid exposes deeper school crisis: Can schools really open safely?  

         Pandemic And Education

COVID Exposes Deeper School Crisis: Can Schools Really Open Safely?

This article details concerns and both sides of the argument when it comes to the reopening of schools and in-person classes that puts teachers and students in danger for being exposed to Covid-19 which lead to a teacher labor union movement in Chicago and Los Angeles. The author goes over the many challenges and protocols both teachers and students need to face in schools as well as the department of education being somewhat ignorant of what is happening and instead of placing better safer ways for all students to receive their education, they are more focused in observing teachers, even online, to see how they are doing in class. Some of these challenges are districts not having the money to found students education and when the pandemic started it was very hard to keep up with the progress of students, thus opening schools, although unsafe, seemed to be the best way. Parents who could not work from home were the ones who felt the most pressure with surveys of students going back to school. The author also expresses her concern for classrooms being large in size, not having air filters in order to help maintain the air clean, and how grouping students to attend class at a specific time of day still has teachers and students highly exposed.

Morris High School Senior Student, Freisaly Melo Rivas

Freisaly has been attending Morris since her first year of her high school experience. I interviewed her over the phone and asked her a few questions on how she felt on the topics of safety in school and the protocols they have been taking in order to keeps students and teachers safe. The questions were mostly about if she felt secure in school, what have the school done to actually make students feel safe, and how is the staff going about students’ mental health to ensure they do not feel as if they are alone during these big transitions and confusion on how the school year will be administered. One of the things that she mentioned to me that was very interesting is that teachers seem to be doing everything possible to make school ground safe again, however, students do not seem to care as much making all of the teachers’ efforts pointless.

Haddad, M. G. (2020). What will schools do when a teacher gets covid-19? The New York  

    Times

What Will Schools Do When a teacher Gets Covid-19?

This newsletter from The New York Times is an analysis mixed with opinions based on an overlook through the CDC guidelines when a student or teacher becomes infected with coronavirus in schools. This newsletter expresses the idea that schools are to be open for a full year and the other years coming along, however nobody within the sciences or the department of education seem to have solid ideas or plans that should be followed if a student or a staff becomes infected. The author expresses an uncertainty that not only makes parents feel uptight but also educators due to how the guidelines do not consist of specifics on how the school will go about positive results and making sure that the virus does not spread in high amounts within schools. The author also gives some ideas of how they can make their precautions after, during, and before someone is infected clearer and more specific in order to ensure students and teachers safety.

 

Field Site Reflection

The curiosity for the community I selected came after a deep thought and concern on how things might have changed in the high school I graduated from in 2020, Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies in the Bronx. Usually in the news we keep hearing that the mayor and the Department of Education are doing everything possible to make sure that students and staff are safe, but they do not go into the specifics of the regulations they have imposed in order to ensure that things are safe, nor they state that they are sure that these are being followed. I was able to see that they have changed the ways of grouping in class settings and provided air filters, as well as sound meditation. However, these things are not effective in stopping the spread within students compared to staff. Students do not take the mask wearing policy as serious as most of the staff staff do, and the grouping is only controlled in class settings, but in hallways nobody manages or keeps on the look for social distancing between students. Similarly, students are not provided emotional assistance as much as before, it seems that the inorganization in academics is affecting many important parts that comes along when caring for students.

Another thing that I was able to observe and know from interviewing a senior at the school is that the ways that teachers are teaching is confusing students because there has been no smooth transition, there is no organization on how teachers go along educating students giving random assignments in paper and laptops. This was one of the things that surprised me a lot. I had always thought that when schools opened around NYC that there was already a clear outline on how teachers would teach and students will learn, but that was not the case. The only thing I was able to see was a lot inorganization around the school when it came to teaching and keeping students and staff safe. I believe that if the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) worked along with the DOE (Department of Education) a great plan would come along to make schools more organized in an educational purpose and not just say that air filters and grouping strategies within classrooms will ensure no or minimum amount of positive covid results.

Doing the observation, finding sources, and interviewing a senior in the school did not only help me develop my essay, but also inform me about the real situations that the school is going through that might be going a long in the rest of NYC’s public school as well. It also helped me realize that we cannot fully trust what the “professionals” say, but instead take a look inside to really see for ourselves the story in between the walls.

 

Field Notes 

Focus on some of the following notes:

• Language between students and teachers 

• Energy levels in classes of students

• How do teachers help them 

• Are students struggling more

• Hallways and transitions 

• Materials used

• Bathroom use 

 

I am in an english class they are doing their college essays, they are doing there 2nd draft. Time is 10:15am Ms.Ardizzone

• Everyone is at a distance, the class is somewhat empty in one side and filled in the other.
• Teacher guides students very thoroughly through the common mistakes she sees in students’ essays such as using spacing after period and commas.
• Students help each other on technical matters 
• Students ask questions with no problem, social distancing is not as a problem as I thought it would be. However, students need to have their masks on in class and aren’t allowed to take them off I guess at any time.
• There are 2 teachers in this english class, they are going around looking at students progress, energy levels aren’t low, they aren’t high either
• 10:25 am teacher wants more quiet and more work
• The class is filled with quotes all over about motivation and right ways to develop good writing. She also has sentence starters and vocabulary for good transitions in your writing 
• I think that the community sense is not lost yet in school and rona has not affected much now compared to when I was in my senior year.teachers have not lost that sense of getting close to students due to coronavirus but some students seem to be less motivated and more distracted than others are. 
• I can see the laptop of one of the students sitting in front of me and i can see that the teacher has left her various comments. She is going back and forth on google looking into how to spell words, I think she is translating.
• Language between students is respectful but some students seem to have a greater relation to teachers and they joke around with her when they ask her something or she goes to see how well they are doing.
• There is hand sanitizer next to one of the exiting door, that was not there before corona
• Now I noticed that the class is clearer than before, the desks that used to be in the right side of the class wall are not there anymore. Students do not sit in tables of 4 anymore they sit separately and distanced.
• Students are allowed to bring there own personal laptops.
• I ask Ms Ardizzone “has the class always been physically distant like this?” she replied “we have been doing rows since the opening of the school there are filters around the class one over there (points to the right of the class) and one in the front”

Mrs Crawford’s class 11:07am

• The teacher recaps hat the class is going to be doing
• The class starts with students getting into their groups of 4, there are 3 groups of 4 and one group of 2. Students cannot sit next to each other but in front of each other
• This class is a little more interactive, students talk more, the quality seems to be the same as the other class
• There are filters here as well.
• Teacher interacts with students with minimal social distance and masks are also wore in class by both students and the teacher
• In this class they are working on a paragraph writing on how someone in a book is a good parent or not. Some students are more involved than others 
• Each group has their own chart written down with yes and no’s and reasons written down under each one of them.
• The teacher sits in the middle of class and explains the structure of claim, explanation and then evidence.
• Teacher goes around giving recommendations and checking where students are at if they have improved or not.
• Each person into the group does one paragraph the class has being in complete silent and rigorous writing for the past 20 minutes
• I think is so good how the teacher guides her students very often and keeps track of where they are and what they should move towards their writing. The class still enhances the idea of a community and everyone doing something to help one another. It is so supportive.

Hallway transitioning is very quick and light. Is not as I remember it to be as packed and students having lots of interactions between one another.

Ms. Cover class 11:58am, algebra 2 class

• Students are also in rows in this class and they are a little fuller than the other 2 classes I attended. Kids are not interacting as much and I was informed that there is a mixture of kids completing work from last marking period and other moving into the work of the upcoming period next week.
• There is one student who is passing around the class calculators, they are not numbered as before to each student they are only given randomly.
• One of the teachers is going around and helping each student individually, we have 10,11, and 12 graders.
• Most students seem to work independently and they also have work to do in Delta math.
• I am not sure if delta is only for homework but it definitely helps teachers keep track of where students might need some help and their grades.
• Now both teachers are on the floor, one is doing the helping as mentioned before and the other is going through the work of students and possibly correcting any mistakes they are making.
• She makes them think very rigorously when they make a mistake, the male teacher in the class is the biggest support for students who are struggling because instead of going fast through the work he seems to work more individually with students 
• This class is very quiet, their is not much movement and interactions between the students or teachers and students.
• I think this class could benefit in becoming smaller or making a group of people who are confused. I also think that it could benefit in pairing students together who are working in the same thing.
• The male teacher going around has an energetic essence, students who are confused tend to call more for him and he goes step by step on students’ work to check in what they did wrong and how it should be corrected by using a mobile whiteboard so they can get a bigger visual of the step they need to correct.