As Modesto City reopens 7-12 schools, kids talk about why they’re back — or aren’t
Some students needed to escape the distractions of learning from home. Some really wanted to make a connection with teachers, even with just two months of the school year left. And some simply miss their friends.
As Modesto City Schools reopened its junior high and high school campuses Monday for in-person instruction, the common thread among teens who shared their thoughts is that they’re ready to begin reclaiming a normal life. And the past year, learning from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been anything but.
Beyer High sophomore Emily Mojica said the school year has been challenging, but her teachers, coaches and friends all have been supportive. Still, as soon as the district said students could return in alternating cohorts for on-campus instruction two days a week, “I was like, OK, I’m going back,” she said.
Emily, a cheerleader who was out in front of Beyer to welcome back classmates Monday morning, said she’s always been a people person and enjoys being at school.
Her family has been hit by COVID-19, though, and even lost a member to the disease, so her mom was “iffy” on having Emily return. “But she trusts me and knows I’m not immature or careless,” the teen said. She and her mom do have concerns about the behavior of others, because some kids think it’s funny to take off their masks and fake coughing, Emily said. But “I’m ready to come back to school, and I’m confident that I’ll be OK.”
Doing its part to ensure that Emily and all students remain OK, the Modesto district follows a Safe Schools Reopening Plan whose prevention measures include cleaning/disinfecting, social distancing, desk shields and other Plexiglas barriers, health screenings and more. Other protocols include seating charts in classrooms, so that should a student test positive, it can be determined which classmates may have had close contact.
One big physical change at Beyer was the taping off of lockers in the classroom wings and their outright removal from the student forum where kids can eat breakfast and lunch. Doing so eliminated health concerns about students sharing lockers, principal Dan Park said, and reduced surface areas that need to be cleaned and sanitized.
Principals have an eye for the puzzled
Park and his counterpart at Modesto High, principal Jason Manning, said the morning was going well and they were pleased to see students back. At MCS schools, students who choose to return to in-person learning are doing so in cohorts, with one group on campus Mondays and Tuesdays, the other on Thursdays and Fridays. Wednesdays are distance learning for all. And families still have the option of 100% distance learning.
Park and Manning said early observations Monday were that classrooms were 25% to 30% full. “We’re hoping that with students coming back, those numbers will drastically increase,” Manning said.
“Parents are excited to get their kids back here with teachers in person,” he added, noting that “the challenge we’re facing now is teachers teaching virtually as well as in person.”
Teachers concurrently instruct the children in their classrooms and those logged in on their learning devices at home. It’s a challenge, the Modesto High principal said, but watching them “meander through that, so to speak,” has been exciting.
Even with students masked, both principals have a keen eye for spotting puzzled freshmen trying to navigate campus. Several times Monday morning, Park directed the youngest students to the teacher or classroom number they were trying to find.
Beyer junior Jessica Le said she knows freshmen who were concerned about finding their way around, and feeling an upperclassman responsibility to help is one of several reasons she returned to school. Additionally, she very much wanted to return to “a learning environment,” she said. “At home, it’s very noisy and I can’t really concentrate.”
Both principals said there’s a wide variety of reasons families have for either sending their kids back to school or keeping them home. Some teens continue to struggle with distance learning and/or the isolation of being at home. Some families with members who are at higher risk of falling ill to COVID-19 don’t feel comfortable about returning to schools when Stanislaus County remains in the red, meaning widespread, tier of the state’s monitoring system.
Students say why they’ve stayed home
Two Beyer friends said that from what they heard about the conditions under which students are returning to schools, they’ve opted to continue with distance learning.
“It’s still super restrictive and stuff,” junior Jaxsyn Bundy said. “We have to sit in little confined spaces in class, and so many other little tedious things, it just doesn’t sound worth it until it’s more cleared up and more free.”
Tu Ngo, a senior, said there seemed little point in returning to campus “to basically do the same thing we are already doing at home.” With social distancing, the block schedule and friends being in opposite cohorts, there’s hardly any opportunity to socialize, he said, “and because we ended up coming back so late, the school year is pretty much over.”
Park said he understands that some families are very comfortable with their children being home, where they’re doing well. But other kids don’t have those supports at home and have been desperate to get back to school, even with the social distancing, the cubicles, the masks. “And I think some were just curious: ‘Let’s come back and see what it’s like,’” he said.
Perhaps more than students in other grades, freshmen want to have some taste of campus life to start their time in high school, while seniors want to have “some kind of finish,” the Beyer principal said.
That’s the case for Beyer freshman Sara Johnson, who said she was so looking forward to her first year of high school. “It won’t be exactly how it would have been before COVID, but it’s as close as I’m gonna get,” she said. “I’m most looking forward to just meeting my teachers in real life.”
As for being with friends, she added, “I just hope we can talk together and eat lunch together and we’re not super far apart where we’re basically shouting.”
Modesto High freshman Morgan Bicek said returning to campus was an easy decision, made easier by the fact that both of her parents have been vaccinated. Online school was “pretty rough,’ though she did well academically, she said. Primarily, “I need to be in a social setting.”
Friend Maddy Bergara said she wanted to experience at least a bit of her freshman year in the most normal way possible. “It I didn’t go back, it would just be on a computer completely,” she said.
What’s she most looking forward to?
“Definitely meeting my teachers in person for the first time, and actually being able to talk to them instead of just typing.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2021 at 3:04 PM.
