Helping Younger Grades During Covid
As the virus stopped the world in the early months of 2020, millions of students and faculty were plunged into a terrifying new frontier: online schooling. The same teachers who relied on students to turn on the projector were now expected to change their lessons such that they would be able to be taught over Zoom, which took ages to get used to. Likewise, students with very little access to the internet were now expected to sit in front of a screen from 8 to 5 with no interruptions and no social breaks. As the pandemic closes in on its one-year anniversary and with vaccines just now starting to roll out, it doesn’t seem likely that we will fully integrate back into in-person schooling this year. The current freshmen will not experience the awkwardness that surrounds teens that are just entering high school. The sophomores lost their chance at looking down at the freshman and remarking about how small they look this year. The juniors are preparing to enter the world of college applications, devoid of any comfort that seeing their friends may have brought. And of course, the seniors are leaving their schools that they never truly got to love to go to colleges they never got to visit before they committed to spending 4+ years to. How do we make the best out of this situation? In times like this, we have to come together and help each other out. The obligations that upperclassmen have to their underclassmen don’t end just because we don’t see them anymore.
In pre-COVID days, clubs were the primary way for freshmen to make upperclassmen friends who can show them who the best teachers are and how to study for certain exams. More than that, the upperclassmen served as a role model for the younger students: the interactions that they have with the younger kids is what dictates the schools culture and how the younger kids are going to treat their underclassmen in the future. Students no longer have sport teams to root for, thus it falls on the shoulders of leaders of academic and conversational clubs to build the image of the school in the underclassmen minds. To stop hosting meetings just because they’re not in-person isn’t just doing the current underclassmen a disservice; the culture that so many have strived to make is in danger of being lost when clubs fail to meet. They’re also a huge reason that many people are as close as they were. Club membership often forms the foundation for lifelong friendships and serves as a melting pot of ideas and personalities that take away the dullness of everyday school life. Without clubs, many students lose their support systems and inevitably burn out, reaching out for help with no one to grab their hand. It’s up to the juniors and seniors who have been in their respective clubs for years to continue on the traditions of the clubs and prepare the underclassmen for when they inherit the role of club leaders.
Online learning has given the freshman an advantage that we would have been grateful to have. We’ve been forced to write notes online, which allows us to send them to the younger students when they’re taking the classes so that they are able to clarify future lessons and have an early understanding on how teachers behave in their classrooms. It can also help with their future notes: they would no longer have to rush to write down every word their teacher says if they already have the outlines of their lesson plans sent to them by their upperclassmen. With complete notes, students can further focus on the analysis of the topic rather than having to force everything down. It doesn’t just stop with notes; sending study guides and past tests is also encouraged to give the underclassmen every advantage possible.
