Five years ago was the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, when the connection between students and teachers was confined to little glowing boxes on a screen.
Today, students at Moraine Valley and across the globe find themselves confined to new boxes, facing a multitude of challenges socially, mentally and academically.
“The pandemic was a traumatic experience for many,” said Jessica Contreras, director of counseling at Moraine Valley, “so when the body is experiencing trauma or experiencing a high level of stress, all it’s worrying about is surviving and trying to get through day by day.”
Similar to today’s uncertain and “unprecedented” times, students were in survival mode during the lockdown. Students and teachers were in uncharted territory and had to navigate the complexities of the new way of education that was “E-learning.”
Being in survival mode can make a person more insular and feel that they can’t reach out because of the stress their body is under.
Ryen Nagle, vice president of Academic Affairs, saw the effects of pandemic on students first-hand: “I was teaching during the pandemic online, to some extent face-to-face as well. I did see some difference in students with that little bit of disconnection.”
Many students who are currently in college were in junior high or high school when the pandemic started and didn’t get back to fully in-person learning until 2022. Some students even felt that time during the pandemic disappeared.
“It just feels like time was moving a lot faster,” Moraine Valley student Hezekiah Goodman, 17, said. “From 2020 to 2021, I can’t remember some days, or months even, from those time periods.”
Students missed out on crucial years for their social development and only had a moment of normalcy before plunging into college.
“A lot of those social skills that you may pick up at a younger age, and those peer connections you may bring into a college setting, a lot of [students] lost that experience. So then coming into a college setting, it can be challenging to then come back to how to even engage with a new person.”
Moraine Valley counselor Jessica Contreras
“A lot of those social skills that you may pick up at a younger age, and those peer connections you may bring into a college setting, a lot of them lost that experience,” Contreras said. “So then coming into a college setting, it can be challenging to then come back to how to even engage with a new person.”
Professors also had a tough time adjusting to a new way of teaching. During the pandemic, they considered getting students to turn their cameras on as a win. Five years later, teachers see a difference.
“For a lot of people, they want that personal interaction and impact with students, and it probably happens best in person. I think students are really longing for that too,” said Nagle. “From what I’m hearing from faculty in the hallway, they’re seeing that again. It’s brought a spark back to their classroom and a renewal back to their engagement too.”
Moraine Valley earth sciences and geology professor Krista Syrup has noticed a shift in students compared with before the pandemic: “Since COVID, it’s so hard to get them to stop talking, because I think they were deprived for a long time with social experiences.”
Due to the pandemic, many teachers have had to change the ways in which they teach and conduct their classrooms. Syrup was one of them.
“Since COVID, I’ve noticed people aren’t coming to class as often as they should be. I feel like that’s mental health,” said Syrup. “I’ve kind of shifted a little bit where I give two, what I call, personal days a semester. Where they can kind of miss, no questions asked, and I don’t take any points off for those days that they miss.”
Coming back to school was challenging for students and staff because of the social aspects but also the academic aspects.
Online learning was still very new at the time for most, with both students and teachers figuring it out as they went. Students had the internet readily accessible and didn’t have a teacher watching over their shoulder, so students could easily cheat on homework and exams.
This problem set many people up to be unable to build upon skills they were supposed to learn. And cheating aside, some students are just not independent learners.
“If you look at the literature and some of the data, there’s what they’re calling learning loss. That happened during COVID for students academically,” said Nagle. “I think that really shows up particularly in math, from what some of the data that I’ve that I’ve seen nationally and maybe to some extent here at the college.”
Despite the initial struggle with online classes, more students are taking them than before the pandemic.
“For a lot of people, they want that personal interaction and impact with students, and it probably happens best in person. I think students are really longing for that too.”
Ryen Nagle, vice president of Academic Affairs
“About 10 percent of our classes before the pandemic were online. We’re now in the 30 to 40 percent of our credit hours online,” said Nagle.
Learning loss was seen in students all around the country. The Hill reported that students of all ages would need 4.8 months of additional instruction to catch up to their pre-COVID predecessors in reading, and 4.2 months to catch up to them in math.
“When a student is struggling academically, that brings down their self-esteem, that brings down how they view themselves, and that could increase anxiety and increase depression,” Contreras said. “So indirectly, some of the anxiety and depression we’re seeing is because the student is trying to compensate for things that they missed out, prior to college.”
The World Health Organization reported that there was an increase of anxiety and depression by 25 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think the other thing we’re seeing a lot post-pandemic is a lot of students not having accessibility to meet their basic needs. So in our office, we definitely have seen an increase in usage for mental health services,” Contreras said.
Survival mode can make it harder for the brain to focus on a task because of the level of stress that the body is under. Being in survival mode can also make trivial things overwhelming, and it becomes harder for people to balance daily emotions.
“We’ve also seen a significant increase in just basic needs support, which includes, you know, food, housing, transportation and things like that,” Contreras said.
Students and their families are also still trying to financially recover from the stock market crash during the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s been a major increase in use of the food pantry at Moraine Valley, which is also associated with the inflation that originated in the pandemic era.
Despite all of this, the pandemic did also bring some good to Moraine Valley.
“If you look at the success rates online, students are doing better in online courses than they were before the pandemic,” Nagle said.
Not only that, but communicating with each other via the internet has become easier and a benefit for Moraine Valley.
“A blessing in disguise with COVID is that it allowed us to develop telehealth services, or being able to connect with students and peers virtually,” Contreras said. “So to some extent, that could expand social connection and community.”
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