Schools are back to normal —but students aren’t

By: Ana Murguia

Asschools slowly begin to return to normalcy after more than two years of online school, social distancing, and isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift in student needs must be addressed by Tamalpais High School. Many students still struggle with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety due to the years of their high school experience spent behind a screen, or in-person but divided by masks, and the omnipresent reminder that life at the time was anything but normal.

Despite the return to in-person school and the removal of the mask mandate as discussion and coverage of the pandemic lessens, many students still struggle with ongoing mental health issues created or worsened by life during quarantine. In fact, the quick switch back to overwhelming course loads, active social lives, and maskless school attendance has been detrimental to many students, creating the need for a new, evolved system for schoolwork and learning after the pandemic.

Many students are still feeling the lasting effects of long-term isolation from quarantine, such as social anxiety and depression, along with additional stress from the last years of in-person school with COVID-19 restrictions. According to the American Medical Association, over one in three students have reported poor mental health during the pandemic.

“In-person school was very intimidating and anxiety inducing. A lot of it was the social aspect, because I had already transitioned to the academic aspect so the social aspect was very intimidating,” junior Maeyana Vogt said.

For many people, the lack of social interaction during online school was the biggest barrier to overcome as schools attempted to revert back to a pre-COVID state. However, many schools failed to predict how pandemic-related isolation would lead to increased feelings of social anxiety, stress, and feeling out of place for many students that hadn’t been able to integrate properly into the Tam High setting before the pandemic.

“I felt like a freshman when I was transitioning to in-person as a sophomore, with my social life,” Vogt said.

“[Full in-person schooling] felt very abrupt just in that hybrid school wasn’t for very long,” junior Charly Kerr said. Many students are still ad justing to normal life outside of the pandemic after years of quarantine, masks, and social distancing.

“During the pandemic, we still supported students online, but we saw a pretty big drop in services,” Wellness counselor Yvonne Milham said. “My guess is when you’re online all day for school, one of the last things you want to do is continue to be online for well ness support.”

The difficulty of accessing mental health resources during the pandemic was another factor that contributed to student mental health issues.

Upon the return to in-person school in March, Milham reported an increase in the severity of student mental health issues. “A lot of it was just due to social anxiety, right, you’ve been away from people for a long time; anxiety about us actively being in a pandemic but returning to school … lots and lots of anxiety.”

However, the shift from online learning to in-person learning had its benefits. “I think for an individual stu dent, how this might help them, in the future, is if you’re looking to study past high school, this might inform the kind of place you choose,” Milham said.

Many colleges have online courses that may work better than a tradition al college experience for students that thrived in online school during quarantine. “It [the pandemic] pushed everyone—teachers, us—to look at other ways we can serve students,” Milham said.

While the pandemic was detrimental to the mental health of many Tam students, it also allowed students to explore learning possibilities for their