New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Students press on amid changes
The first day of school already was different.
For one thing, it started a week late for many. It wasn’t only the new, the nervous, the pampered or the lucky who got rides in private cars but more than half of the student body. For walkers, bikers or skateboarders, wearing a mask on the street was the rule.
And inside, nearly empty classrooms and socially distanced desks reminded many that half the class was at home either watching lessons on their computers or planning for the weekday they’d replace their peers face-to-face with a teacher. For students who weren’t doing half-weeks, tables and rooms were designed to keep everybody apart as much as possible.
And everywhere, the knowledge that anybody — the teacher, the custodian, the principal, the coach, the bus driver or the kid two seats up — could suddenly be gone, at home in quarantine. Or that the entire class, the entire school, could be sent home until a spike in the virus was contained.
Yet most kids have accli
mated to the changes. Here are some of their observations as the 2020-21 school year begins.
A familiar school made unfamiliar
Amelia Stone remembered the layout of Stamford High School from last year, when she was a freshman. But because of the pandemic, the school feels difficult to navigate again, she said.
“The fact that the desks are all six feet away, and the hallways have tape going down them all, and that everybody is wearing a mask is so much to take in,” said Stone, a 15-year-old sophomore.
The halls at Stamford High School are split into separate corridors now, where traffic only flows in one direction to keep students safe.
The lunchroom presented a new set of challenges. Administrators replaced the long tables where students crowded together for lunch with socially distant desks, all facing forward.
“It reminds me of, like, a seminar or a lecture kind of set up,” said Stone. Students eat lunch in three separate waves that only emphasize the lack of kids in the building.
Stone said she is trying to decipher how to do normal things, like saying “hi” to her friends in the halls during their designated days inside the building.
Some friends she doesn’t see at all because of the groups — blue and green — that the school district divided students into depending on last names.
Students come to Stamford High School on alternating days depending on their group as part of the district’s new hybrid learning model.
When Stone isn’t physically in the classroom, she learns from her house while her parents also work from home.
Stone said she understands why all the adjustments to school life are necessary, despite the growing pains.
“Luckily everyone is really responsible,” she said. “I felt really safe during school.”
On the days when she is learning from home, Stone said she feels the loss of learning in a classroom full-time. Asking questions to her teachers or friends through the internet feels more cumbersome, she said.
“I miss being able to go up to my teacher’s desk during any class and ask a question about the work or have them do an example or help me with the problem that I’m on,” she said. “It’s just not like that anymore.”
Orientation in the parking lot
Torrington High School freshman Ella Hathaway started school Tuesday, armed with masks, a Chromebook and a set of COVID-19 rules in her head.
Her mother, she said, was worried about her children attending school because of the pandemic. “My dad said it was my choice,” Ella said.
Her younger brother, who turns 9 next month, is a third-grader at Torringford School. “He’s a little scared, but he’s better,” Ella said. “They’re doing the same kind of thing at his school, but the kids stay in the classroom all day.”
It wasn’t the exciting start to the year she had anticipated, but “it’ll be OK for now,” she said.
Incoming freshmen attended an orientation last week in the high school parking lot.
“When we got there, I got my Chromebook, and they talked to us, saying ‘This is our school’ and things like that. Then we got a Google classrooms tutorial, so we knew what we have to do” for distance learning at home.
Her first day was Sept. 8. Torrington High School is following a block schedule and a hybrid classroom schedule, meaning half the school’s students attend school on specific days, and the other half on alternate days. Ella’s first day included a study hall, English and Spanish.
There were fewer than 10 students in each of her classes, she said.
“The desks are really spread out,” Ella said. “We’re all spaced out. We’re all wearing a mask. The teacher has a mask, and Plexiglass between her and the class.”
Because each class is longer than usual — about 85 minutes — students get a break halfway through, and can ask for a mask break whenever they wish.
“You have to fill something out, go into the hallway and take a break,” she said. “It feels OK in the classrooms. The teachers try to put you at ease.
“I’m pretty accepting of it. It’s not really what I wanted my freshman year to be, but I think it’s acceptable. They’re doing everything that they can.”
In the cafeteria, students are seated four to a table with Plexiglass between them.
“Some people get to eat outside, the other grades, but freshmen eat in the cafeteria,” she said.
Asked how it was in the cafeteria, Ella said, “We were laughing. By the end of the day, my face hurt from smiling.”
The most challenging part of being in school, she said, is following the arrows on the floor in the hallways, which are all one-way.
“I had to go down the stairs, then all the way back from the same floor to get to my next class, because you can only go in one direction,” Ella said. “That’s why they’re giving us five to six minutes between classes.”
Ella is also member of the THS cross country team. No masks are required while running, but the athletes are “spaced way out,” she said.
“The coaches and the teachers are trying to follow all the rules,” she said. “I think the teachers are a little more laid back. They can’t watch us every minute.”
Dealing with technical glitches while at home
At New Haven’s High
School in the Community, junior Anthony Fiore said learning from home improved considerably over the summer. New Haven’s school board voted to keep schools closed for the first marking period — a move that Fiore supported as a non-voting student member of the board. Compared with the emergency learning scenario that began in March when schools closed, the new school year has shown teachers much better prepared and lessons are more interactive, he said.
“You’re not just doing assignments by yourself, you’re interacting with the teacher,” he said. “Overall it’s better. It has some problems, but that’s to be expected with anything new.”
Fiore said that the downside for students is a lack of in-person interaction, but he said he believes that would be a problem even if students were in schools because of safety protocols that include social distancing and face masks.
One upside, he said, is learning in an environment where he feels at home — literally.
“You’re able to focus on what they’re trying to teach you,” he said. “I think there’s a benefit of learning from home and being comfortable.”
He said connectivity issues plagued him a bit in the first week of school, but it’s been smooth sailing since what had been initially a rocky launch.
“My personal experience was the first couple days I didn’t learn anything new and it was like getting to know the system and how it works, but that’s like any other first day of school,” he said. “This week is better. Teachers know what’s happening now and it’s way better than what it was the first week of school.”
Unfamiliar familiar faces
Driving into school together, Jake and Abby Gruttadauria said they were looking forward to reconnecting with friends that they hadn’t seen since March. They knew that this year of school would be different than any of their previous school years, but
they were still surprised at how different their friends looked.
“Everyone looked so different, we all had that quarantine look,” said Jake, a senior at Trumbull High. “It took a second for people to recognize each other.”
Jake’s hair was longer than it had been the last time he walked into the school. Others had gone the other route, with closecropped hair or had grown facial hair in the previous six months.
Abby, an eighth-grader at Hillcrest Middle School, said some of her school friends had looked right at her, not knowing who she was.
“Back in March, I had short brown hair,” she said. “Now it’s grown out longer with highlights. And I don’t wear glasses anymore since I got contacts.”
With her new contact lenses in, Abby said she had to look a little higher to notice some of her friends who had gone through their growth spurt during quarantine.
“They got taller,” she said.
Physical changes aside, though, Jake said the COVID-19 rules in effect at the school had definitely been noticeable, but the social distancing, mandatory mask wearing and other rules had not been as intrusive as he expected.
“It really wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I was expecting to have my senior year learning from home, so even getting to be in school two days a week, it was pretty good.”
The biggest change, the mandatory masks, was also something the students adapted to quickly, Abby said.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she said.
Jake said the students, at least for the first week, had been diligent about following the rules.
“Everyone wore them, over their nose and mouth,” he said. “Everyone followed the direction arrows and stayed distanced.”
Lunchtime was the only time when the COVID-19 restrictions really became an issue. Hillcrest students are eating lunch in their classrooms, and Abby said that was when she missed socializing with friends the most. Jake, who was able to eat in the THS senior lounge, appreciated the socializing time, but lamented that it was only shared with about 10 other students.
“Some of my friends are in the other cohort, so I don’t get to see them,” he said. “But still, on distance learning days, at least, you don’t even have to wait until you get home to go out and meet friends, you just turn your computer off and go.”
The distance learning days also had gone smoothly, Abby said.
“It’s much better than last year,” she said.
Jake agreed, saying the streamed classes were like being in school, even though he was sitting in his bedroom.
Still, the situation remains fluid, and the schools could revert to full distance learning at any time if there is a coronavirus outbreak among the students. Jake said a kind of peer pressure had begun trickling down from the school’s seniors.
“Everyone abides by the rules,” he said. “Hopefully, we can all be back at school together, but everyone has to do their part.”
‘Like no one is around’
On Friday, at the end of the first week of school, it was the “Cardinals” cohort that was in the classroom and GHS student Andrew McRae, a junior at Greenwich High School, said school was very different this week than it has been like in the school in the past.
“Being in school is kind of depressing,” McRae said. “When you enter the school, it feels like all the color is gone. It seems dead. It’s like no one is around. It doesn’t feel very lively.”
Greenwich High, like many in the state, has split students into two cohorts who attend classes in person on alternating days.
McRae compared the experience with going to a concert that you expect to be packed only to find the venue to be mostly empty.
“I think this is just going to be the way it is,” McRae said. “It’s not something you can really get used to. … It’s strange to enter a classroom and find only four people there and this massive camera (for livestreaming for remote learners) there.”
Staff reporters Verónica Del Valle, Emily Olson, Brian Zahn, Donald Eng, Ken Borsuk and Erin Kayata contributed to this story.