INTERNATIONAL DATELINE
4
covid
MONTH
APRIL 2022
evolution of COVID-19
Monday, Jan. 10, 2022:
WIS returns from winter break
5-6%
students quarantined
Week of Jan. 31, 2022:
1%
students quarantined Mar. 3, 2022: Announcement that no negative COVID-19 tests will be required post-spring break WIS continues to mandate masks indoors in accordance with D.C. mandates
The school urged 12-17 year olds to receive a booster COVID-19 vaccine
Mar. 12, 2022: Mask mandate lifted on the Primary School campus
Mar. 10, 2022: Mask mandate lifted on Tregaron campus
51% masking 49% not masking
Mar. 17-19, 2022 First in-person high school
musical
since fall of 2019
february
DMV students reflect on two years of learning in the pandemic By ALEK DANIELYAN and CAMILA LEVEY, 2022 Almost two years after being sent into distance learning, schools across the D.C. metropolitan area have begun removing mask mandates. In light of this major step towards normalcy, Maryland and Virginia public school students reflected on the complications they’ve experienced in school throughout the pandemic. Gray Rager is a senior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (B-CC) in Maryland, part of the Montgomery County Public School system. Rager was firm in his critical stance on B-CC’s response to the pandemic. “[B-CC’s response] has been inadequate,” he said. “From the beginning of the pandemic until now, there’s a lot that could have been different.” The school was one of many that implemented a hybrid learning model halfway through the 2020-2021 school year, along with providing students with masks and tests when the Omicron variant hit. While vaccination rates in the D.C. metropolitan area have been steadily increasing, Rager still notes that at the beginning of 2022, “many kids [didn’t] feel comfortable coming to school… many kids want[ed] online school.” Despite many of the student body sharing Rager’s sentiment, B-CC’s administration has not addressed dissatisfaction with their recent COVID-19 response. Rager notes that the school policies have not been revised and student feedback was unacknowledged after winter break. “The administration loves to pretend they care about [us] and then not do anything,” he said. Claire Ducharme, a senior attending a Fairfax County Public School (FCPS), has been relatively pleased with her school’s response. “It could definitely be improved, but I can tell that they’re at least trying,”
she said. However, she has questioned the justification behind certain policies, like having to eat lunch in the cafeteria. “If [students] eat anywhere outside the cafeteria we get in trouble, but we can eat in the cafeteria glued to each other, which truly does not make sense to me,” she said. Unlike Rager, Ducharme feels that FCPS has taken student feedback into account. “I totally feel that FCPS is listening to student feedback because they heard us say that we wanted to keep our masks and went against the governor to keep us safe,” she said. The recently elected governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, amassed controversy over his signing of Senate Bill 739. The bill requires that Virginia schools end mask mandates and remain open for in-person instruction five days a week, according to the Virginia’s Legislative Information System. Despite this, many schools in Northern Virginia, like Arlington Public Schools and Loudoun County Public Schools, continued to mandate masks for students, something Ducharme believes has been effective in preventing COVID outbreaks. Andrea Villafuerte, a senior at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia, notes that, although the majority of students at her school are vaccinated, there are still some students and parents who openly support anti-masking and anti-vaccinations. “There’s definitely anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, which is kind of scary for the rest of us,” she said. As schools in Virginia and Maryland have adjusted their policies for education and safety in light of COVID-19, D.C. policymakers have been faced with the challenge of developing their educational approach. WIS has risen to this challenge with policy adjustments such as the mask mandate being dropped for the Tregaron campus on Mar. 10.
january
10
Students turn to remote options during quarantine By NAOMI BREUER and GABRIELA LEON-ACOSTA, 2024 The school day starts for most students with an early alarm and the morning rush to get to school on time. By 8:15 a.m., they are sitting in a classroom for period one. Meanwhile, students at home get up at their own pace, in no rush to get to a classroom or leave the house. These students have COVID-19 and have no other option. WIS is not offering a virtual learning option for students with COVID-19, so students have worked to stay caught up with their classes independently in a remote setting. The school requires students to quarantine for eight days after a positive test or appearance of symptoms, and they may return if they receive a negative test after the first five days. Senior Natalie Sanchez tested positive for COVID on Jan. 4, during Winter Break. She tested negative on Jan. 8, the day before school restarted, but had to remain at home because WIS was still requiring a 10 day quarantine due to D.C. Health guidelines. “I was negative at the time that I was missing school, so it seemed counterproductive,” Sanchez said. Sanchez missed three days of school. To keep up with schoolwork as much as possible, she texted her friends about what they did and FaceTimed into class. “For one of my classes, I was going to have a test that week, so I didn’t want to miss review,” she said. “So what I would do is FaceTime my friends and just listen to the classes, even though I wasn’t able to participate and ask questions, but just so I wouldn’t miss content.” Sanchez said she was a lot more productive while working from home. She worked all day, since she had just had all of Winter Break to relax. However, she did fall behind a little in some of her classes. Upper School Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) teacher Trish Beck has only had one to two students out from each of her classes at a time, so there hasn’t been too much overall class disruption. She has been letting students FaceTime, like Sanchez, into class to listen, especially during lectures. “The school’s a little late in trying to come up with policies for [students quarantining], because it’s such a new thing,” Beck said. “So at first [the school was] kind of saying, ‘no, don’t do [FaceTime].’ But now it’s like, ‘help people however you want.’” She also has lessons from last year recorded that she can send students. Recently, teachers had a tech training meeting where they were taught how to audio record their classes and send them to students who are quarantining. Senior Olivia Matuschek tested positive for COVID on Jan. 16 after a week of being at school. Her teachers were very accommodating and she had more time to work on her assignments and got to work at her own pace. “I know that, obviously, I’m not going to learn the full extent of the content that was taught in school,” Matuschek said. “But at least I have a good idea because of my teachers sharing it with me and on OnCampus assignments.” Sophomore Mia Lahrech’s experience staying at home was somewhat unpleasant, partly due to her severe COVID symptoms which made it hard for her to concentrate on her assignments. “There [were] some days where my brain fog was so bad [that] all I would do is stay in bed and eat bags [full] of cough drops,” Lahrech said. Lahrech feels that teachers should be more understanding towards students who are symptomatic. She did her schoolwork by checking OnCampus and Google Class-
room. Her assignments started coming in at around 11:30 am and she finished her schoolwork at 2 p.m. However, while in quarantine, she would’ve appreciated some sort of virtual learning. “It’s really infuriating and kind of irresponsible,” she said. “I’ve got finals that I have to work on. It’s very hard to figure out what’s going on.” It is better for the school to be either completely virtual or in-person, according to Matuschek, who is sympathetic to why WIS is not offering virtual learning options for any students. “I know that especially [for] a lot of people in my grade, at times it can be really overwhelming and it would be really nice to take one or a few days off to just go virtual, even if you don’t have COVID,” Matuschek said. “From that perspective, I understand that they want to keep school open and to not have hybrid.” Sanchez, on the other hand, would have preferred WIS to offer a virtual option, especially since students have to miss a lot of class time. “If WIS put specific rules in place, they would definitely be able to offer the option and it would work towards their goal of being safe,” Sanchez said. A virtual option would be more disruptive to the overall learning, according to Beck. She also said that the school is worried about not having enough bandwidth for every class to be on Zoom. “I’m not going to make the whole class do a distance learning lesson and not do something interactive there because we want to include the couple of people that are home,” Beck said. As of now, Beck believes that the current method of helping students individually is working. But if more students are away, then a more substantial solution will need to be put in place. Matuschek thinks that WIS needs to have a proper solution in place for students who have to miss exams, especially finals. She did not miss any exams and was a lot less stressed with the extra time she had at home. “As long as your teachers are able to offer a sustainable solution while you’re at home, and to allow you to learn from home, that makes it possible to not have to have an online option,” Matuschek said. Upper School Math Teacher Neil MacDonald has had four students in quarantine. According to MacDonald, the best solution for students at home would be for teachers to get on a call with the student at home, as well as teach the class to the students present. MacDonald said he did this for a particular student. “The call wasn’t totally clear, but it was better than nothing,” he said. However, there are multiple problems involving this method of teaching, namely bandwidth problems. MacDonald’s advice for students at home is to follow the school day routine and reach out to teachers over email if they need help. When Sanchez returned to school, she was very excited to be back after a month of not being at school. “I felt super safe,” she said. “Especially knowing that I had been negative for the past five days. So it felt like I was safe and that other people were safe. It didn’t feel like a hazard to anyone.” Sanchez strongly suggests other COVID infected students reach out to friends and teachers to stay as up to date with their work as possible. However, all of this should only be done if students are feeling fine and able to do so. “I think [at] the beginning of me being sick, I pushed myself too hard,” Matuschek said. “I was still trying to keep up with all my work, but I was still having symptoms. Now I’m actually feeling better, and realizing that I should give myself a break.”
