Dane Connor and Ethan Zabar
STAFF WRITERS
Andover High School’s current freshmen, the Class of 2025, is adjusting to the transition into a high school environment after the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, the lives of many people changed drastically, for better or worse. School sessions were held in a hybrid or fully remote setting, and that was a huge adjustment for students everywhere. Now, Andover High School’s Class of 2025 must handle the transition back into fully in-person learning on top of the massive change to learning in a high school setting.
Katherine Johnson, an English teacher at AHS, believes that despite the setbacks caused by the past year in online learning, the class of 2025 may be able to take valuable lessons away from that period and apply them to their freshman year. “In my opinion, though not ideal, the skills that students were able to gather and hone during remote learning could be a huge asset to draw from for their high school experience,” Johnson stated. “Remote learning forces a lot of students to look at themselves as learners, and understand what works for them as students in terms of organization and time management.”
Johnson is of the belief that from a teacher’s standpoint, expectations for students should not change, but should come with empathy after a long time struggling with the threat of COVID. “My standards have not changed,” Johnson said. “Students are people; we are all here to learn from each other and to do the best work we can do. We’re here to think, and read, and learn, and write, and laugh… I appreciate that for all students the past couple of years has been intense and challenging. We all need to be sensitive and approach one another from a place of compassion, understanding, and kindness.”
She continued by saying that teachers had adjustments to make as well. “As a teacher, logistically, remote learning forced me to be incredibly clear about my expectations and pacing.” She then stated that she sees this year’s freshman class as highly engaged learners, and hopes that as a teacher, her class is a safe and productive learning environment for the new additions to AHS.
Sahil Khosla, an AHS freshman, felt that the trajectory of his peers’ maturity dipped during the pandemic. “Overall, I feel as though the growth of most of the people around me has stagnated, and I find more and more of them beginning to approach education and school with carefreeness and listlessness,” he said.
However, Khosla felt that COVID’s impacts are beginning to fade. “Overall, the effects of COVID only really affected my eighth-grade year, as that was when the experience was new to all of us,” he added. “We’ve been going through it for so long now that the memories of how we did things before seem less realistic with each passing day.”
Although their eighth-grade year during the heat of the pandemic is over and memories have started to fade, many freshmen still feel a great impact from their time with COVID. Brody Harris, another member of the freshman class, said that life, especially school, has still been difficult for him as a result of COVID’s impact. “My eighth-grade year was very bad grade-wise, and I am in classes that are a little lower than I would like to be in,” stated Harris. “For example, my eighth-grade math teacher did not let me do geometry this year and Algebra 1 is mostly repeat stuff I already know.”
Harris also felt like communication with teachers was as difficult in his freshman year as it was in eighth grade with the pandemic present. However, he did credit the teachers, acknowledging that the school staff had just as difficult a time.
Possibly the biggest worry about the pandemic impacting incoming freshmen was that they have matured slower during their time in isolation and that as a result, they’d have a more difficult time making responsible decisions. Conversely, in an unofficial survey run by ANDOVERVIEW staff, two-thirds of the interviewed students felt that socializing with their peers was as easy as it had always been, despite a possible dip in social maturity.
Ms. Reidy, an AHS math teacher, gave some comments about the freshmen’s transition into high school. During their last year of middle school, the class of 2025 was thrown into an online learning environment, and Reidy believes that the high school workload shocked inexperienced freshmen. “They didn’t have that year to ramp up work,” she said.
Reidy stated that the increase in workload from middle school to high school is a difficult transition for everyone, and the circumstances given to the freshmen have only made that transition more difficult. She added that she felt the freshman being isolated for so long impacted their ability to socialize with peers and adults. “They weren’t with anybody,” she said. Reidy felt that the freshmen’s excitement to be back in person for introduction to high school would provide a boost in energy and morale, and in turn, motivate them to make up for the lost time.
