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How are you coping? Are you worried and anxious? What should the school community be doing?

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How are you coping? Are you worried and anxious? What should the school community be doing?

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 Please share your thoughts on the guiding questions and resources to share widely (To add your response click on the plus (+) sign to the right for each question and type your response)

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 Please share your thoughts on the guiding questions and resources to share widely (To add your response click on the plus (+) sign to the right for each question and type your response)

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We can have meaningful virtual parent-teacher meetings so more families can participate. Scheduling and family care prevented many families from attending conferences in the past.

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Myself and every colleague I've spoken to have found this year to be even more challenging than the two prior COVID years. I have frequently been so overwhelmed I've questioned whether I can return and keep doing this job. I wish my school community was taking more seriously the need to offer additional support to staff and awareness of the ongoing stress that has been taking its toll.

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Other than the spring 2020 months, we have been in school since August 2020. The best thing about returning was more face to face contact and less online meetings.

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Returning to school, especially before vaccines were available, was very stressful in terms of my daily exposure and fear of spreading the virus to my loved ones. I was even more isolated because many of my friends and relatives were still working from home and feared seeing me. When we went back to a full return, I also found many of my students were extremely overwhelmed with adjusting back to a 5 day week and panic attacks and lack of coping are even worse than before the pandemic, when rates were already increasing. In general, everyone has been on edge and more reactive.

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Feeling less isolated. It was difficult to do things alone from my house for so long without much contact with others

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Feeling less isolated. It was difficult to do things alone from my house for so long without much contact with others

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It is hard to navigate so many different beliefs, perspectives, and approaches re: COVID, especially once the mask mandates were dropped. Some people don't seem concerned about COVID, some people are very worried and scared for their health and the health of their loved ones. Creating a classroom environment that is respectful, meaningful, and engaging is difficult. 

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It is hard to navigate so many different beliefs, perspectives, and approaches re: COVID, especially once the mask mandates were dropped. Some people don't seem concerned about COVID, some people are very worried and scared for their health and the health of their loved ones. Creating a classroom environment that is respectful, meaningful, and engaging is difficult. 

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Everyone is under so much stress - students, families, educators - and it feels like how long can we all keep it up?

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Everyone is under so much stress - students, families, educators - and it feels like how long can we all keep it up?

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Great to see students, staff, and community at large regaining the space to come together and support our schools. I am starting to see students who were stunted in the social emotional learning continue to make progress transitioning back.

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Students Behavior, Lack of Staff, What happened to the district SEL task force

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Communication is important, I wish we could all get on one platform for communication but that seems impossible.

Our community care about DEI, what has been happening? Was there ever training for our students and staff, if so how did it go?

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For my kid, being able to see her friends. She was so lonely during remote instruction! For me, having that space of being able to not be always "on" in parent mode, being able to get work done without constant interruptions, being able to rest. And not having to be the enforcer of all things school, or having to try to organize my daughter's day. My kid and I are both neurodivergent in ways that impact our executive function skills, and me trying (and more often than not, failing) to manage my kid's time, focus, and organization during remote learning was excruciating for both of us. And remote learning had a MUCH larger need for executive function than inperson schooling does. It was all the little things that added up: like, in person, a kid is never going to get so focused on their project in allied arts that they get left behind in the computer lab for half an hour, because the teachers can physically see them. When everyone is lining up, the teachers will notice if one kid is still at their computer, and will help them transition. Remote learning lost a lot of the structure that my kid needs. Getting that back has been a huge relief.

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What have we actually learned? What SHOULD we have learned?

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What have we actually learned? What SHOULD we have learned?

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I think that's a better question, because I see no evidence that policymakers have learned some of the most important lessons. I think we have actually learned that technology access is critical for engagement. I think we have actually learned that we don't need to send home a forest's worth of paper notices every year :P. I think we have actually learned that offering virtual attendence options for meetings, conferences, etc. expands access. I think we have actually learned that we need to do better on social emotional learning, though I don't think we've learned yet how to do that effectively. And then the things only some of us have learned: we should have learned that kids need to feel safe first. We should have learned that flexibility and grace are critical to human well-being. We should have learned that no matter how much you want to, you can't just pretend a traumatic thing didn't happen and snap back to "normal"; that's not how human brains work. We should have learned that there are consequences to chronic underfunding of schools. We should have learned that teachers deserve respect and professional curtesy. We should have learned that we can't sustainably rely on schools as the only safety net for everything.

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I'm able to see all my friends again not to mention the fact that learning is much easier than it was online. Due to the rough year earlier they have removed homework in my school which is an added bonus.

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The best thing about going back to school is seeing teachers and students. As a teacher, I can work individually with students. There is also a possibility that we will get to do afterschool clubs some days as well!

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One major downside of going to school in-person is the fact that the pandemic is still happening and is raging on. Many of my friends have gotten sick and so am I. Something I found very infuriating was the fact that they lifted the mask mandate. The entire reason I got Covid in the first place is because of the mask mandate lift. Another annoying thing is the fact that many of our teachers are absent leaving subsitutes that expect good behavior but don't show good behavior back to us students. One Issue I've seen in my school is the group punishments where only one person has done something "wrong" but the entire classroom is punished (Ex: No recess) I've also seen a good amount of hypocrisy in the halls when the teachers are telling us to be straight and silent in line however they're screaming at the top of their lungs. I understand this year has been tough on the teachers but it has also been tough on us students.

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Getting Covid is real! As a teacher, I wore a mask in school , but let my guard down after the mask requirement was lifted. And I got Covid! I was illness free for 2 years, but as soon as the mask mandate is lifted, I get Covid when I stop wearing the mask (I resumed wearing a mask!) Students and teachers have social emotional problems and fatigue. We are exhausted from the pandemic. Our schools need less MCAS and more counselors and psychologists. Our administrator carries on like nothing is wrong.

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The option to finally be able to participate in after school clubs again has been an exciting experience. I joined drama and had a great time!

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1) continue to wear a mask
2) continue to pool test
3) 5 days out for Covid is not adequate.
4) Less money spend on the military and more on supporting public schools.

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The fear of getting Covid and passing it to vulnerable relatives. The return of run-of-the-mill colds. Re-establishing morning and evening routines: it's been especially challenging in that my kid is definitely more in need of time to decompress outside of school hours. It makes it hard to see family/friends. I also feel like so many kids have anxieties now that weren't present prepandemic: my own kid gets nervous in crowds in ways she never did before. The sensory overwhelm of returning to the outside world is real. I've also often felt unsure as a parent of where the line is in advocating for my kid: I know that teachers are so incredibly burnt out, too. So many of the supports that I would normally have had access to evaporated, and so I feel like school is the only place left I can get any help with my kid's challenging behaviors and needs - but then I feel guilty about it, knowing how overburdened staff already are. That plays into communication, too: during remote learning, I had an unprecedented level of insight into the daily workings of my kid's classroom/curriculum. Communication is definitely better now than it was prepandemic, but I miss that more slice-of-life type info: knowing what they're reading, what they're learning about. It's also frustrating that so much of the emphasis has been on "learning loss" or "catching up" on academic skills. Where is the grace? How am I supposed to teach my kid self-compassion when the message of the school system is relentless perfectionism? We've gone through and are going through a collective trauma, and it's absolutely maddening to see that ignored.

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Getting back into a regular routine outside the home, being with colleagues and students in person again. It wasn't a "back to normal" thing, but it was at least getting away from the isolation that had been created, which was a hardship on everyone.

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The biggest challenge was that the school/district leaders brought everyone back with a "business as usual" mindset and little to no attention was given to the social-emotional challenges displayed by so many of the students. The traumas presented in varying degrees of serious misbehaviors which only seemed to escalate throughout the school year. Consequences for violations were/have been pretty non-existent and certain students have disrupted multiple classes and school events on a regular daily basis. The lack of substitutes was extremely difficult to manage. The huge number of absences due to covid infections during several months of the year severely disrupted many classes. So many challenges. And now, MCAS! Why??? It was a highly disruptive year. That said, most are doing their very best to make it somewhat productive. They are all, students and staff alike, to be commended.

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I think I've learned that we really do need to start to listen to the people who actually do the work and are impacted by the deficiencies and have suggestions/recommendations to address them. Also, listen to the kids who need much greater social-emotional attention and time to regroup and be allowed more opportunities to work together collaboratively and cooperatively.

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Seeing his peers in-person has been huge for my 16 year old. He is very social and loves dancing so show choir has been a saving grace. These types of activities need to be in-person so he would have lacked a huge social outlet that he so needed. Less Zoom for sure.

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There still was the concern early in the school year about the spread of the virus. The virus spread through show choir easily because of the dancing and singing, kids weren't always great with wearing their masks, and correctly. I think kids were getting mixed messages from teachers and peers about COVID and the masks. Even though my son was meeting his social development needs, there was still this otherworldly, surreal environment of masks, catching the virus, keeping your distance. Felt so "alien." Kids don't feel totally safe and secure. Rely on each other for support and assurances. Also, I think there were kids returning that were experiencing even greater hardship as a result of the pandemic. Was the school ready to address all this? No.

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Technology/remote learning can be a positive if used in the best way possible to support student learning. There is a huge gap in SEL because of being isolated for so long. The kids missed a whole year of interaction with peers and all that goes along with that. Huge, huge need for mental health resources. There is a lot of innovation out there on how to address mental health and safety. Is LPS looking at these strategies? LPS has gotten a huge infusion of cash; let's allocate it to SEL and mental health supports.