Students and staff reflect on year filled with twists and turns

With the tumultuous 2020-2021 school year winding down, students, staff, and administrators have had several months to reflect on the various shifts and changes resulting from the COVID pandemic. Despite the challenges, the year generally went well as a whole, as the community learned and adapted throughout all the ups and downs of the experience. Luckily, after schools were shut down in March 2020, the Oshkosh Area School District (OASD) had several months to plan out the different learning models which have driven the direction of this school year.

“A team was put together at the district office to look into various aspects of responding to the COVID-19 crisis. I know student and staff safety was the number one priority, and to that end, there were a lot of things that they looked at. So all decisions revolved around that,” OASD Board President Barbara Herzog said. “There was some direction given by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for schools to consider. But the district relied heavily on the Winnebago County Health Department, who kept up with the ongoing recommendations from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).” 

Another factor which influenced decisions was issues with liability if student and staff health was at risk.

“There was also a situation where if there was a health or safety threat and the health department recommended something, such as being in virtual or hybrid but not five days a week, there were implications with our district liability insurance provider if we went against those recommendations,” Herzog said. “That is, if there was a problem that occurred because we ignored the recommendation, then the provider might not pay any claims or even drop the insurance. So that was a big factor.”

West itself was not necessarily involved with major, overarching decisions that were made at the district level, but school administrators had significant  influence over the more specific workings of their schools. 

“The school wasn’t responsible for making decisions on what instruction model we were in; those were district level decisions,” Principal Erin Kohl said. “However, once we knew what decisions were made and what models we might be implementing at West, we had to figure out how to implement safety protocols and instruction protocols in the best way possible. Some of those were things like how do we organize the one-way hallways? How do we set up the cafeterias safely and how many lunch shifts should we have?”

One impactful decision was to eliminate W-hour in favor of more lunch shifts. While this greatly reduced the possibility for students to interact with clubs and have more one-on-one time with teachers, Kohl believes the decision was necessary.

“Eliminating W-hour was definitely a decision we did not want to make, but it was necessary to avoid having an additional cohort of people who could potentially be exposed to COVID,” she said. “We needed to use that time in order to have the four different lunch shifts to reduce the number of students in the lunchroom if someone tested positive.”

These changes were made in preparation for the hybrid model at the beginning of the school year; however, initial plans were actually different.

“Back in the summer last year, when plans were being developed to return students and staff to the classroom, the initial plan was to be five days a week in-person, but at the beginning of the year we had issues with positive COVID cases with some of our student athletes and at least two of our schools,” Herzog said. “So, we shifted into the hybrid model, with two groups of students on an A/B schedule. Our custodial and maintenance people didn’t believe there was a need to shut down the district for a full day to clean; they felt they could keep up with that on an everyday basis.” 

The hybrid model reduced the number of students who congregated in the school with its designated “virtual days” for each group, but still maintained some semblance of normal schooling with in-person classes on the non-virtual days. However, after several months of no in-person school starting from March 2020, it was not necessarily enough to get all students back into full out school mode.

“At the beginning of the year in hybrid, I definitely felt a little discouraged to complete my work,” senior John Koth said. “It just wasn’t the same.”

There were other issues as well, including the irregularity of the hybrid schedule.

“One of the concerns we heard about the hybrid schedule is that you would have in-person learning Monday, Wednesday, and Friday one week and Tuesday and Thursday next week,” Herzog said. “It became a problem for younger students who needed childcare, and for high school students it was a problem for people with jobs and at-home responsibilities because the schedule was always changing.”

Due to worsening COVID trends and increased quarantines among students and staff, the decision was eventually made to transition to the virtual model, where students would participate in live classes over Google Meet.

“By the third week of September, the decision was to go all virtual. At that point, there were more positive cases, and it was the recommendation of the Winnebago County Health department that we go virtual,” Herzog said. “Then, we had no idea how long we would be virtual, but the plan was for it to last only a few weeks. But there were more positive cases, and Oshkosh and Neenah were even on the top ten worst places to be for COVID.” 

The period in the virtual model marked a strenuous time for both students and staff, as many challenges presented themselves in the online realm.

“In virtual, you almost had to teach yourself and learn concepts very independently,” senior Andrew Engedal said. “Virtual was definitely difficult for many people.”

The virtual period also saw huge issues with lack of student motivation and grades dropping drastically. Teachers had to devise new ways to engage and encourage students.

Art by Abe Weston

“While we were virtual, one of the strategies that I found which worked well was to provide extra voluntary sessions throughout the week. I got some students to show up who otherwise wouldn’t,” CAPP Speech teacher Carrie Newton said. “Alongside that, I left some live sessions open after normal class time to allow students to just hang back to sometimes just talk or ask questions. So using technology to keep communication open, I found, was the best way to motivate students. Though, I don’t necessarily have all the answers because I know we all struggled with motivation at some point throughout virtual learning.”

English teacher Shelby Brey even tried to set up contests between her classes to excite and motivate students. She also reached out to students individually.

“I started doing little competitions between my classes as far as having your cameras on and things like that,” she said. “I was reaching out to students and families to see what could be getting in their way and setting up individual meetings. I think students were responsive to that. Obviously, virtual was not an ideal situation but I think that for the most part, students and staff made the best of it.”

To counteract their lack of motivation, some students took up new hobbies and interests, and made sure to find time for relaxation and enjoyment.

“I was a little unmotivated, especially at the end of second semester last year. But around that time I also started a new hobby with electronics, and I found that to be really useful,” Engedal said. “I decided to make a schedule and say ‘I’m going to do my work until this time and after that I’m going to do this thing I want to do.’ That seemed to work out really well.”

Koth’s inspiration came from the fact that his high school career was almost over.

“In online classes, it was hard for me to participate in the way and the manner that I normally do. Usually, I like to be vocal with my teachers and I like to interact with them. But in virtual, it was easy to turn off my camera and not even worry about my appearance,” he said. “But for me, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and see that college was coming up soon, and that helped me. My motivation was the fact I was graduating soon, so I might as well finish strong.”

Eventually, to many students’ relief, the school transitioned back to hybrid at the beginning of January, and then quickly to five days a week with all students on February 25. 

“At that time, the number of positive cases had dropped over the course of several weeks and we knew that students and staff were eager to get back into schools,” Herzog said. 

This decision by the district characterizes the current status of school, and a transition back to a previous model seems unlikely. Throughout the myriad of changes, the district had to handle concerns from staff, students, and parents about safety and schoolwork. For example, the district and schools handled requests from teachers and students to work from home virtually during the return to full time school.

“We had a number of staff who expressed concern about their own health and safety or concern about other people in their household. So we had procedures put in place to allow teachers to contact the Executive Director of Human Resources to see if an exception could be made to see if they could work from home,” Herzog said. “I know a number of those requests were granted for teachers. The same thing was true for students. If they felt completely unsafe coming back into school or they were concerned about someone else’s health, they could have permission to continue from home and ‘Zoom’ into their classes.”

Throughout the school year, students had some complaints about school-specific decisions at West. At the beginning of the year, for example, students spoke out against the fee for parking passes. Students also expressed concern about the one-way hallway rules, which were recently repealed. One complaint that Koth shares with many students was against Chromebooks blocking all but a few websites during hybrid and virtual schooling.

“Why did our Chromebooks block everything after 12 am? That was a difficulty I encountered and a real pain,” he said. “If I was up past 12 am on a school night, I wasn’t slacking off; I was working on schoolwork. So when they took away my privileges to visit third-party sites after 12 am, they actually took away my privileges to work on schoolwork because I couldn’t get to all the things I needed. It wasn’t hindering my ability to goof off; it was hindering me as a student.”

On a classroom level, teachers worked hard to address the concerns of students as they navigated all the changes and new expectations.

“For me, just asking students how they were and checking in with them when they came in the room was what I did. I tried to monitor if there were certain situations making students feel uncomfortable,” Brey said. “I wanted to make sure that they were comfortable talking and sharing things that concerned them. Obviously, students are a big part of our school, and having that open line of communication was important.”

Despite the challenges, there are some aspects of the strange year which may continue as benefits for teachers and their students in later years.

“I think that my work with my Canvas classroom was probably the greatest gain I had as a teacher. If I were to have students outside of class for some reason, I now have a lot of tools and skills on how to frame an online curriculum,” Newton said. “So, for students who find themselves sick or on vacation, I think they’re going to find it very difficult to find excuses for not having access to what they need. The online stuff adds a layer of connectivity we didn’t have before.”

Some teachers found useful online resources from unlikely places.

“Something else that I have really found helpful this year was GoGuardian. I know students don’t really like GoGuardian, but there’s a chat feature I’ve never used before this year. I’ve been encouraging students to use the chat feature to ask questions about their writing or reading, and I feel like that has been effective for me, particularly for students’ writing,” Brey said. “In my creative writing class, I’m able to send a chat saying ‘how’s it going?’ and then they can ask me to look at something really quickly, and I can just pull up their screen. That’s something I thought would be clunky and awkward, but actually it’s been really awesome, and I feel like I’ve been able to help more students because of that technology.” 

The past several months have definitely been quite the experience, but with about one month left, perhaps it is past time to simply take this school year for what it is worth: not necessarily an arduous ordeal, but an extreme challenge with many lessons. The skills that students, staff, and administrators have either intentionally or unintentionally learned this year will definitely carry over into coming years, and a positive outlook may improve everyone’s fortunes. Brey had a message for students as the last few weeks begin to wrap up. 

“I would say thank you for working hard and thank you for making the best of a situation that is obviously not ideal,” she said. “Take this experience and learn from it and grow from it. Push hard until the end of the semester.”

By Akashraj Karthikeyan

Oshkosh West Index Volume 117 Issue VII

April 30th, 2021