By Aditi Singh
The coronavirus pandemic continues to pose a challenge as the students and teachers at Saratoga Springs High School try to resume everyday life.
The past 2020-2021 school year has been a challenging one for both students and teachers alike. Changes are not going unnoticed by our educators, especially those in higher level classes, which require strong resilience and retention skills. Teachers across all departments are noticing gaps in these skills and are helping students rebuild them, though teachers within the science and mathematics departments could be facing the most significant consequences.
“Coming to school only two days a week, zooming in from bed, kids just stopped coming to school. Talk about a gap in life,” said Mrs. Bell, an honors and Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry teacher.
Her concerns were more focused on the retention of habits that were established before the hybrid year due to the extreme need for them in AP Chemistry.
“The idea of problem solving and resilience and grit, applying skills you already have to an abnormal situation, that’s where I feel my kids are struggling a lot,” said Mrs. Bell.
Mrs. Bell is not alone with her concerns on skill retention.
“I feel like self-discipline skills, including how to utilize current notes in order to sharpen information, is not as strong as it has been in past years, and I personally think that is because there was so much access to the internet when we were hybrid learning that there was no need for retention because everything could be looked up,” said Mrs. Preston, a Regents and AP Biology teacher.
Unfortunately, the loss of personal skills is just a part of the issue. For subjects where previously learned concepts are important, familiarity is not as strong as it once was.
“I do it [pre-requisite work] to an extent each year, but we’re definitely focusing a little bit more on it this year,” said Mrs. Belden, an AP Calculus teacher.
Many teachers have seen a slight decrease in average test scores compared to previous years, and some are even experiencing a higher dropout rate. As a result, there is a large concern for lost skill over the hybrid learning period, and teachers are hoping to help recover.
“[In] our Covid year, we did the best we could do. . . but I think there was a lot of material that was missed, or students are struggling with this year,” said Mrs. Chudy, the department head of math at the high school and an Honors Pre-Calculus teacher.
Mrs. Chudy also expressed the value of flex time in helping students rebuild skills.
“The communication between our teaching vertically has been tremendous here at Saratoga – we are looking at where our students have come from,” said Mrs. Chudy.
Other teachers also emphasized the need for effective study skills in getting back on track.
“It’s hard because you have to teach the curriculum too, and teaching study skills isn’t part of the curriculum, but I’ve tried to give the kids different ideas of things to try when they’re studying,” said Mrs. Getman, a College Statistics teacher.
Mrs. Getman, along with many other teachers, also acknowledged the mental effects of the gap year. “A lot of it is very overwhelming for them, and I don’t think a lot of students have developed as many coping strategies as what adults have to help them deal with all of this,” Getman said.
As a community, the teachers and students at Saratoga Springs high school are working together to overcome the challenges imposed by COVID-19.
“We’re going to figure out what’s best for everyone and move forward,” said Mrs. Bell.
Edit: A previous version of this article did not capitalize “Honors Pre-Calculus” and misspelled “abnormal.”