Part VI (September 2021-February 2022)

The 2021-2022 school year began with a return to the five-day learning model. Masks were required until Feb. 23, after the school board voted to change the requirement to a recommendation. This step was encouraging to many at EHS who hope for a return to a more typical year. 

Stein: “If you look at the Fall sports, they were mainly outdoor sports with the exception of swimming and diving for girls, but you have soccer outside, tennis outside and cross country outside. We weren’t allowed to use locker rooms. People were coming to just practice and they were going home. We were trying to limit any team gathering. I remember following the case counts for 10,000 and seeing things continue to rise. Specifically with sports, I remember we were shutting teams down because of the number of close contacts. And so you know, while the fall started really well, by November, we started to feel the impact of it being hard to keep up with the number of kids that were testing positive and or the number of false contacts related.”

Tommy Molldrem (EHS freshman): “It didn’t feel real when it happened. We’d been rehearsing our musical “Mamma Mia!” for three months. We were all ready to go. It was so exciting. And then it was kind of just like a downhill spiral the week of the show because our opening night got canceled because of the snowstorm. On Sunday, someone said in our GroupMe that they had COVID, and they were like, ‘We don’t want to worry you guys’, ‘We still want the show to go on’, and ‘It was so much fun getting to work with you.’ We thought we could still [perform the show], but like people were starting to get tested and I didn’t think I didn’t even worry about it. I know I probably should have gotten the test I was like, but I didn’t have any symptoms. I don’t even think I was [near] that guy during rehearsals. I mean, I’m vaccinated, nothing’s gonna stop me. But then that day more people got tested. And there were like 10 people that were like, ‘Oh, I COVID too,’ ‘I have COVID too,’ ‘I have COVID too.’ So then I went and got a rapid a COVID test. I remember I was sitting in my basement waiting for my results, and my mom is like, ‘Tommy, don’t be stressed out, but you do have COVID.’  I just sat in the basement for 10 days and I mean, I didn’t have any symptoms. I was fine. I just didn’t want to get other people sick obviously.”

Guevara: “I don’t think I was afraid [to fly out and see my family] until my dad got COVID last fall and he almost died; he was in the ICU. I think that was the moment that really hit me, that you can lose someone that’s really important to you even if you do all the right things and even if you are vaccinated and boosted. People in your sphere can still get sick. There’s nothing you can do to help it and you feel helpless.”

Greene: “I think our comprehensive approach, which is what we tried to do at the beginning, really to plan and to be thoughtful, served us very well this year. I mean, we’ve been able to keep kids in person this whole year. That is not true for neighboring districts or even other private institutions. And I give credit to the administration and a supportive board, and that is definitely just what our goal had been in the beginning. It’s just, you’re going through the mud to get there.”

Rodriguez: “There’s a lot of articles and research that was published in the last year about the effects of online learning on [English language learners]. What they found was that learning online was harder for students who are new to the country and new to the language, and also for those who are from a lower socioeconomic class. They were supposed to be in Google Meets, and they were not there. Turning in homework was very hard because they didn’t understand the teacher. So it was harder for this particular group, maybe than for any other group. Including some Special Ed students too. So yes, second language or multilingual learners were probably the most affected group by online learning.” 

Sanger: “I used to worry that teachers were going to take the path of the travel ants and just become completely obsolete and that we could just be replaced by an online system. My experience last year completely put my mind at ease that we need teachers. The social aspect—the interaction between teacher and student—is so important and that’s an affirming feeling that it’s really hard to replicate what happens in a classroom.”

Dunna: “I didn’t even know that some of them had braces, right? Those little things are just like, knowing that I had braces and I can connect with them on [those] silly little things are just how I’d describe COVID and the pandemic and my experience with it.”

Sanger: “I absolutely love the fact that I no longer have to say ‘Can you please pull your mask up?’ Just in terms of my own sanity—that is huge. I don’t have to deal with that part anymore. I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re not going to see it spread in the school and if that’s the case, then I’m all for it.”

Alexander: “I have a theory. I think this is like God or the universe or whatever… This is like our ‘warm up’ crisis and I think it’s scary how badly we handled this one. Like this one was supposed to be easy, this one was not very hard. I think in the future, the challenges we as a species are going to face, and as a community are going to be way worse.”

Dunna: “My hope for the future is that students do get to experience high school without any limitations. Like go to the dances if that’s what they want to do and do all their sports if that’s what they want to do. I want to support them knowing that they are safe and healthy.”