ASB
Masked students cheer during a basketball game against Los Gatos High in 2022 — the first year after lockdown.
Today marks five years since March 13, 2020, the start of the COVID-19 lockdown in California.
Many recall the email that started it all — a seemingly inconsequential, 3-week extension of Spring Break that soon expanded to months of isolation at home.
“The day before lockdown began, I remember scrambling to finish my newspaper layouts before a track meet and studying for an AP Chem exam,” Class of ‘21 alumna Allison Hartley said. “When the school announced that we would be home for two weeks, it was honestly a relief.”
What Hartley didn’t anticipate was staying at home for the next year and converting to online schooling.
The crisis was severe. In just the U.S., over 1.2 million people passed away due to the virus in the months and years after March 2020. To keep students and staff safe, over 6.3 million students in California turned to online schooling.
Even years later, the lasting impacts of the pandemic era are still present in education today. Students, teachers and administrators all worked in tandem to overcome the overwhelming and diverse issues they faced, and even after the transition back to in-person education in 2021, the stark challenges of that time remain in various forms.
Students’ struggles with isolation during lockdown
Students experienced COVID at starkly different points in their lives. Class of ‘27 and Class of ‘24 alumni faced particularly striking challenges as they worked through tough transitions from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school, respectively.
Class of ‘20 and Class of ‘21 alumni who were seniors and juniors, respectively, lost key high school experiences like winter formal and prom, and the Class of ‘20 had a drive-through graduation at the end of the year.
In addition, the shift to the more relaxed nature of online learning often led to dramatic changes in study and personal habits. As both students and teachers adjusted to the new online environment, teachers introduced asynchronous assignments, letting out classes early and leaving students to complete assignments without strict deadlines.
Class of ‘24 alumnus Daniel Wu recalls many of his classes implementing a “rough draft, final draft” testing system, where students would take a test in class and receive a grade based on completion — the rough draft. Then, after class, students would go back and revise their answers with open notes, turning in the “final draft” at the end of the day.
This low-stress, flexible testing style was inevitable while online, and teachers had few ways to prevent cheating. However, the slower pace often led students to grow accustomed to a more laid-back lifestyle, causing a decline in discipline and motivation.
Remote learning applications like Zoom meetings, Canvas discussion posts and PearDeck slideshows couldn’t replicate the environment of traditional in-person classes, and without teachers to keep students accountable, many found it difficult to stay engaged and on task.
“Many of my peers would take classes in bed or multitask being on Zoom while playing video games, watching shows, or calling with friends,” Class of ‘23 alumna Christina Chang said. “It was really on us to be self-motivated and disciplined to stay on top of our work. In a way, the pandemic nudged us to learn that we were accountable for our own education earlier on.”
Sophomore Ian Kim was in fifth grade at the time. He recalled spending most of his time playing video games and connecting with friends he made online — a social opportunity COVID unexpectedly opened. However, this distanced him from in-person friendships and made it harder to build new ones.
Current seniors experienced some of that transition — the lockdown started in the latter half of their seventh-grade year and ended at the start of their freshman year. The opportunity to have a “fresh start” at the beginning of high school was unique — it allowed them to reconnect with the classmates they hadn’t asynchronously connected with, in-person.
“There’s this acquaintance you have where you’re kind of friends in the context of a class, but outside of school there’s no obligation to meet them or hang out with them,” senior Ashish Goswami said. “I think those people are what make the school environment and those relationships were lost over COVID.”
Students reflect on the transition back to in-person school
For many, the transition back to in-person was a blessing — prolonged isolation had bred loneliness.
“I craved normalcy so much that it’s hard for my current self to empathize with that feeling. It’s not something I’ve felt since,” Hartley said. “Going back to in-person was amazing because it began to satisfy that. It was such a relief to see teachers and friends in-person every day and get back to routine.”
However, adjusting back to the fast-paced rigor of in-person school proved to be challenging, as many students struggled to break bad habits formed during remote learning.
“My grades took a slap in the face in the first semester of sophomore year simply because I had terrible habits from lockdown and was so distracted,” Wu said. “Many of my friends felt fine returning to school, but it was a bit of a struggle for me to get my act back together.”
Lasting impacts of the pandemic on students’ learning
While lockdown became a distant memory and life steadily returned to normal in the years since, the legacy of the pandemic left lasting lessons and habits for students. For some, online schooling reshaped their approaches to learning.
“COVID pushed me to make my studying more dynamic, utilizing online resources like YouTube videos from The Organic Chemistry Tutor over strictly textbook notes and in-class lectures, which continues to benefit my learning in college,” said Wu, who is a freshman at Northwestern University.
In spite of COVID-19’s many devastating effects — such as high fatality rates and fears of becoming infected before a vaccine was available — others also recognized some positives coming out of the experience.
“Honestly, I think the pandemic may have improved my work ethic. After COVID, I felt like I was really behind, which pushed me to work even harder,” Kim said. “It gave me the ability to learn online. For example, now I can take community college courses entirely asynchronously without any issues like lack of attention or engagement.”
Chang noted how her experiences during the pandemic impacted her approach to learning as a college student today.
“COVID gave me a deeper appreciation for traditional classroom learning and has informed my college experience,” said Chang, who attends UC Berkeley. “I realized during COVID that I get a firmer grasp of course content through in-person classes, so I still make an active effort to go to lectures and discussions, even though attendance is not required and most of my classes are recorded nowadays.”
Teachers’ adaptations to asynchronous learning
The initial months of lockdown in 2020 sparked a frantic race to shift education entirely online for teachers. In March, teachers had just one week — plus the two weeks of spring break — to convert their curriculum and teaching methods into a virtual format.
“We had to learn all kinds of new tricks, like using a webcam and Screencastify,” English teacher Amy Keys said. “Planning class time was a major challenge, as online learning was less efficient and students were less engaged. We had to compress the most meaningful parts of our lessons into the 90 minutes.”
After getting through the remainder of the school year, teachers spent the summer refining their approach to the online environment they knew they would face in August. Keys, along with many other English teachers at the time, took classes all summer and collaborated to develop a new curriculum. They attended seminars and workshops with existing remote schools like Stanford Online High, which demonstrated how to adapt in-person teaching to an online format — for example, how to conduct discussions around controversial issues online.
Administering tests and quizzes online remained a challenge without an ideal solution. Many continued to implement open-note and take-home tests.
“At the beginning of COVID, grades just froze for a little while,” said math teacher Kristen Hamilton. “We tried to do assignments only, and we didn’t really do quizzes and tests — just take-home tests. I just gave credit for whether students did it or not.”
The math department tried to maintain quizzes on Canvas, but soon discovered that it was incredibly inefficient. Hamilton remembers spending hours correcting erroneously-entered test scores. To her, “it was a nightmare of typing.”
Others, like AP Chemistry teacher Janny Cahatol, maintained graded tests but struggled with ensuring academic integrity.
“There were definitely some people who cheated their way through,” she said. “They would be unmuted on Zoom, but muted on their computer, so their mouths would be moving but I couldn’t hear anything. I had no way of knowing who was in the room or if they were using their phone.”
Alongside technological and instructional challenges, teachers also noticed how much personal, face-to-face connections were lost. Social studies teacher Kirk Abe saw how this loss affected his usual way of teaching.
“Sometimes you want to talk to a student about a specific issue, and it’s much harder [to address online]. In person, I could just go, ‘Hey, do you have a second?’ after class,” Abe said. “It’s just those little things we take for granted, and you really realize their importance when you’re in a situation like the COVID pandemic.”
Teachers’ views on COVID’s lasting impacts on students
Many of the technological adaptations, like an increased use of Google Slides and Canvas, have been maintained in the post-COVID-19 education world.
But as the pandemic washed over and life seemingly returned to “normal,” it became clear that things were far from the norm — teachers have continued to notice dramatic changes in their students in the years since.
In English, Keys found students moving away from reading full books, and preferring reading excerpts instead, thus losing out on the full, genuine experience of reading.
In chemistry, Cahatol noticed a degradation in students’ cognitive abilities, even years after the end of the lockdown.
“This is the fifth year after COVID, and it’s the first year where I feel like the rigor of my class is somewhat on par with what it was before,” Cahatol said. “Every year after COVID, I thought that students would be back to normal, but they were just not there in their critical thinking abilities.”
Many teachers also noticed students’ addiction to technology, a habit developed during online learning. Behaviors like multitasking or gaming during class — which became routine over lockdown — proved difficult to break students of even after returning to in-person instruction.
“The number of boys addicted to their phones was striking,” Cahatol said. “They could not leave their phones alone during class and we’re going through some kind of withdrawal, even among some of the smartest kids. It was really sad to see.”
Blatant misuse of devices in the classroom is not confined to one-off cases — it’s more present now than ever, some teachers told The Falcon.
“Before COVID, I would not have kids on their computer in my class, and now they don’t understand why that’s a problem,” Hamilton said. “I would never have had that conversation five years ago.”
Communication among students was also affected, and some students failed to develop or even lost basic social skills.
“Now when I say ‘talk to your partner,’ I hear the buzz around the room. But for at least the three years following the pandemic, it was just silence — the students were like isolated islands,” Cahatol said. “Before, maybe 5% of the class was introverted in that way, but after COVID, it was closer to 40 or 50% of the students. Now, I pair the desks up intentionally to encourage social interaction.”
Changes in administrative responsibilities and approaches
Administrators were tasked with the management of students’ education online and completing the transition to online school in a safe and timely manner.
Principal Greg Louie recalls how members of the district’s administrative team: the superintendent, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and the principals of both schools all met in advance of the lockdown to discuss the shift into virtual learning. The group initially didn’t anticipate staying online for over a year and all the challenges that would follow.
“For me, I was just getting to know Saratoga High School. I started July 2019, and by February 2020, my students and staff were at home with no end in sight,” principal Greg Louie said. “When everyone returned the following year in phases and then finally fully returned in August 2021, I felt like I was sort of starting over again.”
As schools returned to in-person schooling and navigated through the challenges of keeping students and staff safe, the role of school nurses became essential. Nurses constantly collaborated with the county’s public health department for updates on COVID-19 management and coordinated with administrative staff to plan strategies to keep students safe.
“Our usual duties and responsibilities took a back seat to COVID — COVID testing, tracking, communications [and more] consumed 80% of my time,” district nurse Lisa Tripp said.
To prevent the spread of the virus, strict measures regarding COVID tests and exposure tracking were put in place. COVID testing was mandated for all students who were exposed at school, as well as prior to any sporting events or field trips. The large number of students who required testing each day was extremely difficult for nurses to keep track of, especially as students changed classes multiple times a day.
“We were required to send exposure notices to all classmates and teachers when someone tested positive,” Tripp said. “We had a tracking sheet where we would enter positive cases, and monitor that they did not come back to school too early. At one point they had to be out for 10 days. Later it was changed to 5 days. We had isolation tents set up outside the health office for sick students. It was a tough time to be a school nurse.”
The lockdown in retrospect
The pandemic left a lasting impact on society, both academically and socially.
“I feel like my concept of time has just been messed up since the pandemic. The fact that half a decade has gone by,” Goswami said. “There’s this theory that everyone has a lot of unprocessed trauma from COVID that’s causing a lot of mental health issues to proliferate and a lot of fragmentation. Because people spent a lot of time online, they got put into echo chambers.”
Ultimately, the period of over 18 months of isolation may seem like a lifetime ago for many, but it has reshaped how students and staff work, connect and learn in a face-to-face environment.
Five years later, the devastating losses from the virus are not forgotten and many transformative lessons continue to resonate among survivors. As the memory of the time period fades, the resilience shown by students and staff during that time remains a lasting tribute to how people can adapt and persevere in the face of the totally unexpected.