The Middle Schoolers’ Perspective During the Pandemic

Everyone has a right to have an opinion, however, some peoples’ are more worthwhile than others. Many people are giving their opinions on schooling during the pandemic, all the while forgetting about the people that are actually affected by their policies: children. We believe that the world needs to know what middle schoolers are thinking about going to school during COVID-19, and what those middle schoolers are doing to prevent the spread of the virus.

In the Gibbons Gazette staff team, most people believe that in-school learning during the pandemic is safe. In fact, out of 16 people, 9 people(which is 56.3%) said so. Furthermore, 37.5% of people, or 6 people, believed that in-school learning was somewhat safe. Not only do most Gazette staff think returning to school is safe, they also quite like it. 37.5%, in fact, said that in-school learning is treating them well and that they’d continue doing it given the chance. 12.5% said that they absolutely love in-school learning, and 25% said that it’s alright, and that they’d probably continue doing it. This is similar to the beliefs of many adults, which means that their decision to return children to school was a good one.

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Of course, with the term “in-school learning” comes “online learning” or “virtual learning”. Many adults believe this to be the main cause of mental health issues in teenagers, as one of the reasons we returned to school. However, when asked to plot how much the pandemic/virtual learning affected their mental health on a scale from 0-10, most of the Gibbons Gazette team had an answer below 5(62.5%, 10 people). 25% of people answered 0, and 2 people answered 2, 3, and 4. This shows that the pandemic may not have affected teenagers’ mental health that much(at least here in Gibbons Middle School).

This line of thinking, however, matches up with the students’: most Gibbons Gazette staff(62.5%, or 10 people) say that they do not like social distancing policies. Don’t be worried, though, because they also said they still follow them for safety. Others(18.8%, or 3 people) said they liked the policies and followed them. Cases of COVID-19 have to go down, unfortunately, before these policies can be removed.

The most important opinion of them all, is how much the pandemic has affected students’ day-to-day activities. Now that things are returning to normal, most of the staff(43.8%, or 7 people) stated that their daily life was only affected a bit by the pandemic. This probably was not true during the strongest surges of the pandemic, but the cases have slowed down and it’s now safe to return to many previously undoable activities.

Usually, when people want an opinion, view, or perspective on something, they don’t ask the schoolchildren. However, when the decision made is affecting them, it is only fair that adults should at least ask the kids. Hopefully, this piece on the middle schooler perspective during the pandemic will let you know what we think. Adding onto that, to other middle schoolers, what’s your thoughts on this matter?