How COVID-19 is Affecting Students and Teachers Academically

February 23, 2021

Over the past year, COVID-19 has drastically created changes all over the world. From country lockdowns to limited visitations with friends and family, almost everyone agrees that COVID-19 has seriously affected everybody worldwide. However, one of the biggest changes in all of this is right at the heart of the schools. Students and teachers from every country have been sharing the struggles and conflicts within the new systems. While some schools are purely online, some grapple with the new environment in their classrooms. With the new learning adaptions, students and teachers are both affected academically because of the pandemic. 

To begin, students in schools are faced with the fact that they are receiving smaller gains of information this year than the previous school years. For instance, in the article “How is COVID-19 affecting student learning?”, it is stated that “In mathematics, students were predicted to show even smaller learning gains from the previous year, returning with less than 50% of typical gains.” This is essential because several students may be distracted by everything that is going on with the world. It is also possible that students are just not grasping the information as much as they used to. Additionally, the possibility of their mental health problems increasing due to the lockdowns can severely affect a student’s view on life. Also, from the same source, they share the idea that “They disengaged from school due to economic, health, or other factors.” So not only did COVID-19 affect students academically but also caused other problems that tie with their learning. And while these reasons may seem like they are only affecting students, they are heavily affecting the people that provide them the education they need as well. 

Along with students getting affected academically, teachers are also facing similar problems. According to the article, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Teachers”, they shared the fact that “The coronavirus pandemic is creating huge challenges for the teacher workforce – layoffs, pay cuts, fear of COVID-19 exposure among those returning to brick-and-mortar classrooms.” Teachers are over are suffering the consequences of being cut off, which is incredibly horrible in their situation because being a teacher is their job. They do it as a living and to be cut off or having lower pay, they could be struggling financially. Not only is this the problem, but with the new learning environment, they may be having a hard time adjusting to the new system such as using Zoom for virtual-learning students. Consequently, in the article “Why We’re Exhausted by Zoom”, a teacher voiced that “There is constant need to repair, to apologize…I am constantly switching views from one screen to another, to scan their faces.” Teachers are having difficulty needing to organize their students through zoom and teaching them at the same time. For teachers worldwide, these are major problems as it not only harms the student’s academic growth, but also a teacher’s workstyle.  

To summarize, students and teachers are getting affected academically because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Students are learning less and having trouble with their new learning environments while facing mental health problems from being quarantined. And teachers are getting laid off, and their pay is getting cut as well. Worldwide, they are struggling with the new learning changes while trying to adapt to them. In the future, there are hopes that everything will be back to normal again but are going to have to wait a while for the old norm to come back. 

Bobcat Nation • Copyright 2021 • FLEX WordPress Theme by SNOLog in