Long Covid is Coming For Education and We're Not Ready

As we enter year three of the global pandemic and the world runs back to "normal" in total denial of the facts, sometimes it's easy to forget that it has been such a short period of time. Grief and loss has warped all sense of time but the public is still learning about Covid and its long-term effects.

Research shows that about 43% of people have long Covid.

Symtoms include cognitive issues, fatigue, "chronic immune dysfunction." In addition to all of the death and loss Covid is a mass disabling event and it's very clear by now that not only are our institutions not prepared to deal with this but they don't actually want to.

Educators, both K-12 and higher ed, will be dealing with generations of students that are affected by this. Many educators commented at the beginning of the pandemic that education, like many other systems, had a chance to rebuild in a way that served their students, did better, and just...chose not to. Schools and administrations are still focusing on standardized testing, seat time, and learning loss instead of the mental and physical health of their students and employees. Education as a field and institution is totally and completely unprepared for generations of children, students, affected by Covid.

Let's start with the fact that "1 in 500 children in the United States has experienced Covid-19-associated orphanhood or death."

• The APA recommends that schools have "one school psychologist for every 500 to 700 students."
• Yet out of 48,479,590 public school students only 41,030 are in schools with "at least one full or part time psychologist." 
• 114,580 have a full time counselor and counselors have 360 students in their case load.

So schools do not currently have the capability to support students dealing with grief, loss, and mental health issues. Educators have been advocating for years for all schools to have social workers, psychologists, and more counselors. For the most part this has not resulted in any change or improvements.

People with long Covid are "suffering systemic physical problems."

• Let's start with the obvious- physical education classes. The approach to health and PE is antiquated and damaging. These programs rarely focus on helping students make good, long term health choices, finding exercise they like and can maintain and make good health choices. Too often they are fat phobic and set up environments for bullying and self esteem and body image issues. They have no long excluded large numbers of students for a variety of reasons. 
• So what happens when health and PE which is generally a required class or two in high school and has some sort of presence in K-8, has to be totally overhauled to refocus on better habits and accommodate students whose physical capabilities restrict or limit what they can and cannot do.
• Some of these problems include "microscopic blood clots." So how will teachers need to rethink seating arrangments in classrooms and group spaces to allow for students with physical problems and those that need to sit, move, adjust to be physically comfortable? It certainly means a total rethink of school furniture which continues to all seem trying to win awards for the most uncomfortable, unaccommodating possible.
• Students may have a hard time catching their breath. So they may move slower. So transitions between classes, how we build and design schools needs to be reconsidered. A lot of schools are not built with accommodation as the default. They may have elevators but often require a special key to use. Most schools depend on several levels of stairs as the default. So what if we have to rebuild or redesign for a different default? If  athletic fields and space between buildings has to have sidewalks, railings. Some schools are spread out, huge campuses. Will these need to be redesigned to instead have smaller footprints, taller, elevators as default and not stairs?

"Low oxygen levels may contribute to long Covid's most common symptom, severe fatique."

• So how long can we expect students to sit in a class? Classes? Some schools have year long 6-8 periods a day. Some schools have 4 90 minute block classes organized by semester. How do schools need to rethink this? Are shorter classes better? Do we need to not schedule students for more than say 3 academic classes a semester? Do we need to start having study halls or academic supports as defaults? Not only to help support tehcnology needs and access and tutoring but to give students time to work. Many schools used money available to move to online platforms, use Chromebooks, some were able to make hotspots available. But 24% of adults who make under $30,000 a year don't own a smartphone. 43% don't have broadband. 41% don't have a computer at home. Some states are making moves to increase broadband access but it's a slow process.
• While we talk about access to technology we also have to ask how fatigue, the ability to focus, will affect how long students CAN sit in front of a computer to work. While many schools are back face to face and students aren't spending 6-7 hours a day online staring at a screen, many are still spending a lot of time working online. Are they being assessed on what they know or are they being assessed at how well they can sit in front of a screen and comprehend the lessons?
• How does lower oxygen levels affect students cognitive ability? How they process and understand the content, instructions, skills learned in class?

 "Even people with mild cases of Covid can experience sustained cognitive impairments, including reduced attention, memory and word finding."

• Many aspects of learning still prioritize memorizing information rather than knowing where to find it and applying it. This will have to change. This means that not only will teachers and professors have to change HOW they teach but what they teach. It also means that the standardized teaching that so many schools prioritize and are required to participate in in order to receive federal funding has to go.
• Instead students should be taught where to find information, not have to rely on remembering it, and classes should focus on how to apply this information.

Long Covid as well as the after effects and consequences of Covid will affect every aspect of education. There are three main areas that should be prioritized.

• First, the design of schools needs to change. Their air filtration systems should have been updated when all of this first started. Windows that never open need to be replaced with windows that can. Monitors need to become standard in all rooms to be transparent about air quality. Buildings need to be redesigned for accessibility. Given the falling down nature of most schools, the limited money (usually a small percentage of lottery earnings) dedicated to improving or even keeping up schools, this is one of the biggest issues. A big reason schools have not upgraded and instead chose hygiene theatre and plexiglass is because all of this will cost a lot. And there is no money.
• Classroom design and layout as well as building design needs to change. Classrooms should be larger to accommodate mobility aids. They should allow for wider walking aisles. They need to not have 30-40 desks crammed in them. We need to change the furniture and the layout. Conference style tables, comfortable, big, rolling, chairs.
• Second, how teachers teach needs to be completely changed. Teachers need to be trained in Social Emotional Learning and Trauma Pedagogy. Teachers need to be taught new ways to teach that acknowledges and centers the above issues. Assessment as we know it and has been implemented for decades needs to go. It is not equitable to have high stakes testing about benchmarks, instead assessment needs to focus on growth and application. A balance needs to be struck between online and virtual options for accessibility, more virtual school options, more choices for students who do better OUT of racist, ableist, violent schools. Teachers need to balance in their teaching all the wonderful things computers and apps and internet can do against what students can do at once, can focus on, can absorb.
• Third, schools will have to get rid of the punitive policies and cultures that they have clung to. Attendance policies need to go away forever. Online and remedial options, chances to catch up, need to be normalized. All schools should have dedicated teachers for online and dedicated ones to help students catch up. Policies that punish students for standing, listening to music, wear hats or hoodies, or otherwise don't conform, need to go. Students need to be allowed and encouraged to use the coping mechnaisms they have, to center their own comfort. Everyone should be encouraged to prioritize their health and not come to school when sick or depressed. Schools should model getting help.
• Finally, schools need to build in support networks and normalize getting help. This means more school psychologists, social workers. It means more community contacts to be able to anticipate and address larger issues. Guidance counselors need to have smaller case loads, and teachers need to have smaller classes. Programs that prioritize and normalize mental and physical health should be a norm and schools should become centers for their communities. Some schools did some of this during the pandemic, acting as food pantries, vaccine clinics, providing resources. All schools should become community schools.

As a lot of teachers know when you accommodate your classroom, your policies, your environment, everyone does better, not just the students who "need" the accommodations. These changes would radically change what education looks like. They would be better for students, their families, the employees.

But as we enter the third year of this pandemic I haven't seen any widespread acknowledgement of what education needs to do in order to face the issues currently facing the field, and which will only grow exponentially as time goes on. Over and over again education plays catch up if it pays attention at all. Educaiton has been purposely underfunded and ignored for decades so rather than having some improvements to make to reflect these current issues schools are facing the overwhleming prospect of trying to catch their schools up from the last few decades AND make these current improvements. Schools are not ready. There is no support for it. There is no money for it.

And all of the lack, the lack of support, the lack of care, the lack of acknowledgement, just adds more and more weight to students and employees. There is more to do, more to accommodate on your own, and less and less help. Everyone is "back to normal" and just ignoring not only the current situation we're all still in but the consequences of the everything everyone has dealt with the last few years, and this is all on top of even more damage that students and communities have been dealing with under Trump and the GOP, which was on top of the Tea Party demonizing, hating, and despising education.

So what happens to our schools when conservative bigots drive good educators out of their field under threat of being themselves, teaching truth, or refusing to lie to students? What happens when those same people drive money to "school choice," resulting in the biggest boom of charter schools since white parents refused to send their children to desegregated schools and a large number of private Christian schools appeared. Many schools, many communities have become hostile work environments for many teachers. "55% of educators are considering leaving the profession earlier than planned." But leaving is a privilege and not everyone can. So what kind of learning environment is that?

What is the effect on students who are abandoned, left behind, ignored? We are talking about decades and decades of effects. A student who entered elementary school in 2020 is ending second grade only knowing the pandemic. If they have long Covid their learning and education will always be affected by this. For students who are in middle or high school or college and have long Covid may have a harder time coping because it will be very clear to them that there are deficits, changes, and these can be harder. They might suffer mental issues, anxiety, depression, because there is a pressure to perform to "normal" levels and they just can't but the entire world tells them they should and there's no help, no acknowledgement.

What about educators who are fried? Exhausted? And this will only get worse as there is no relief in sight, no help is coming. As the world at large moves on at the same time it drops all mitigation factors, educators are all still dealing with the same things, the same issues, the same problems. Trauma is cumulative. Educators have had to personally take on expenses, the mental and physical costs, as well as try to support students, make all the accommodations they can. Do more with less, which has long been a mantra for education has taken on apocalyptic meanings. 

In a world where people can't wear masks to keep from killing people I don't feel very hopeful that the very institutions that have epicly failed these last few years will suddenly rally and do what is right. I am terrified of what this means for students, educators, communities. What the impacts will be on our entire society. I wish I could believe that there was a plan, that these conversations were not just occurring but were supported, funded, acted on. But I don't. And I am tired, and scared, and hopeless. And I am so worried for all of my friends and students who are all trying the best they can against just ridiculous odds.