ST. LOUIS — We know the COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on kids’ learning as well as their social and emotional wellbeing.
So, how do you help students bounce back after falling behind?
5 On Your Side spoke with teachers at Parkway North High School and Sorrento Springs Elementary.
"Educators talk about the gap – the gap in achievement. That gap is definitely bigger now,” second grade teacher Lisa Jacob said.
"It’s a struggle because the retention hasn't been there,” Parkway North High math teacher Julie Parks said.
"You can tell more social, emotional things that we are starting to notice in the classroom," Sorrento Springs teacher Elize Meyer explained.
"You have to kind of re-build and you have to pre-access," said Parkway North High School teacher Megan McCorkle.
As you can imagine, teaching looks much different today than it did before the pandemic settled in.
"We have to be really cognizant of making breaks and setting up routines for them,” McCorkle explained.
McCorkle said she’s noticed some of her students struggling with socialization, especially her freshman and sophomores who haven’t truly experienced the in-person life of high school.
"We even see some kind of regress and return to a screen because I think it's just too much for them," she said.
Parks teaches trigonometry and calculus and has adopted spiral teaching.
"If I’m teaching something to do with solving a quadratic formula, I have to kind of remember that they might now know the basics and they might not know something they were expected to learn in algebra 1 and so it’s constantly going back and forth,” she said.
Math scores took the biggest hit last year in Missouri according to the state’s standardized test results. The largest decrease was in algebra 1, with a decline of 9.8% last year compared to 2019 when the tests were last given.
"I’m always going back to previous material to get that retention," Parks said.
The testing also revealed that elementary grades were impacted more than middle.
Jacob said her students are all learning at different levels.
"Instead of teaching one lesson to the entire class, we do small group lessons now," explained Jacob.
This way, Jacob can zero in on students who are really struggling.
"There are some who are farther behind than they have been in the past, but to me they're still learning," said Jacob.
All the teachers said the test scores are one mark in time and do not define their students. In fact, they stress that they’ve noticed positives in their student’s character. They’ve all developed a sort of grit and drive that has helped them become independent thinkers.
"This does not mean that this is who you are as a learner for the rest of your life," explained Meyer.
"I keep changing things, so hopefully that will improve things. Then keep looking at the data and come back every day one foot in front of the of the next. Keep looking at the data to try improve what we can," said McCorkle.
Many of the skills the teachers picked up when they were teaching virtually are still being used inside the classroom. Parks said she still sends kids home with tutorial videos to teach refresher lessons on math problems. Parks and the other teachers said they still use zoom often to make themselves available to students who need extra help.
For teachers, the workload hasn’t changed since coming back to the school buildings. They still work 10 to 15-hour days. They said the impact of the pandemic may take a few years to recover from, but they are confident students will be OK.
The best thing parents can do for their child’s success is to be positive at home. That energy is contagious and will carry into the classroom.