By ABBY WILLIAMS
Hamilton Heights English Teacher
Editor’s note: Abby Williams teaches 10th grade English at Sheridan High School. This column is the first in the return of a series of columns to be written by students in her class.
Back to school after five months of combined stay-at-home and summer vacation, many of us teachers and students are so happy to be here. I have heard from so many of my students and fellow teachers just how glad they are to return to school.
Speaking for myself, I am happy to be back also. I missed being around high school kids with their creative ideas and weird TikTok dances. I missed my co-workers and school friends. I missed having a routine and feeling like I belonged somewhere.
I’m also excited and grateful to be back working with my students to provide a student column for the Reporter, which will begin next week.
Though my stay-at-home experience was safe and comfortable, I did feel alone through it. Missing those daily in-person interactions made me feel isolated and without my support system. It was hard, and it was stressful. This leads me to believe that many students’ stay-at-home experiences were much, much harder than mine. I’m also certain that many of my students’ parents and other adults in general have struggled as well.
I wanted to think more and learn more about this, so I did some Googling. I found a recent article titled “COVID-19 and the other pandemic: populations made vulnerable by systemic inequity” which was published in the Nature research journal, September 2020. The authors found, through various academic studies, that many already underserved populations of Americans have been much more heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Sheridan, where I live and work, a likely underserved population would be people and families living in poverty. According to the Indiana Department of Education, 42.8 percent of the student population of Sheridan Community Schools is “economically disadvantaged.” Underserved students in my community may be without access to quality healthcare. If they or their family members are ill, they may not be able to be tested for COVID, have access to masks, or receive needed medical care. They may also have some mistrust of the healthcare system. Their parents may have lost jobs due to the pandemic. They may experience food instability.
As a teacher, I can’t help with a lot of the issues my students may face at home. But, I can work to be more understanding and open-minded about where they are coming from, physically and emotionally. While I feel staying at home was hard for me, I can understand that it was actually significantly harder for many of my kids.
I can be welcoming to my students and offer them kindness and a safe classroom to be in for 45 minutes a day. I can listen to them speak about what their experience was like, and I can work on listening and not trying to “fix” it for them, because I probably can’t.
Finally, I can teach my students strategies for handling stress and anxiety during times of uncertainty, which I hope they will use and keep for future use.