Covid Impact on Students: 5 Tips to Help Children Heal

Covid Impact on Students-What the Studies Show

The Covid 19 Pandemic produced trauma for children, and as the pandemic fades the focus turns to identifying Covid impact on students and helping them recover. Any teacher can tell you that the school closures and social isolation of the pandemic had a negative impact on children. For children in poverty, schools provide more than just academic services and the negative impact was even greater. Studies have corroborated the loss children have suffered. One good resource for data is the Institute of Educational Sciences. Measurable impacts of the pandemic include:

• Negative impacts on student development, including a sharp increase in classroom disruption and interpersonal conflicts.
• A greater need for mental health services for adults and children. In many areas, the need outpaces available service providers.
• Tardiness and absence increased for both students and teachers and has stayed high.
• Academic loss was significant, especially in reading and math, and especially for children in poverty. A good summary of this research was compiled by the Brookings Institute. Overall, standardized and classroom test scores declined.

So, we know that kids have suffered emotionally, socially, mentally, and academically…what do we do about it? How to we help reverse the Covid impact on students?

Covid Student Recovery Strategies

1. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy.

We know that kids have social, emotional, mental, and academic needs. Some also lost their sense of safety and routine in the disruption of the pandemic. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs reminds us that it is counterproductive to work on higher needs without first addressing foundational needs. This can help provide us a roadmap for the beginning of our school year, guiding us to spend time on basic needs during the transition to the school year.

If children do not yet have their basic needs of food, shelter, and safety met, this is where we must start. Building a relationship with children, including one of open honesty, helps children see us as a source of predictability and safety. Telling kids “everything will be ok” is a delicate balance. For children who have experienced that sometimes things are not ok, this builds distrust in what we say and think. Being optimistic but honest and not overpromising is key. Additionally, finding ways to offer snacks (even backpack snacks to take home each afternoon) helps reinforce that we are a positive resource.

Once we meet children’s basic needs to the best of our ability, they need to feel successful and competent. Meeting them where they are to help build these experiences comes before challenging them and finding the limits of their ZPD. All humans want to feel purpose and belonging, and feeling successful through challenges helps us build a sense of purposefulness.

Additionally, students need time, space, support, and even direct lessons on how to make friends and bond with their classroom community. Humans do not feel secure until they understand their place in the social landscape. Students who are clouded by feelings of insecurity are distracted and not able to concentrate, and therefore not ready to learn.

2. Make mental and emotional health support explicit.

Supporting children is about more than being there for them. It is helping children help themselves build toolkits for life. For example, it can even be useful to teach Maslow’s Hierarchy to students elementary-aged and older and help them create a self-assessment to check in with themselves each morning and identify their needs. This builds a sense of control, which helps manage stress levels and teaches life skills. Click here for a printable needs assessment I have laminated and used with students in the past, giving them an erasable marker to do their self-check each morning.

Children experienced myriad new sources of stress during the pandemic. Teach children what stress is, how to recognize the signs of stress, and stress management techniques to help them cope. There are great lesson plans and resources about stress for teachers.

3. Intervene early and often.

Whether it is social skills, letter sounds, or math facts a child is struggling with, provide interventions as soon as you see they need extra support. Some struggle is good for student development, but since Covid children have seemed more fragile and unsure of their chances of success. It is important that we reinforce growth mindset and help children feel success to help fortify them to face challenges. Explicitly teach them about growth mindset and help them track and take pride in their own progress. Competitions with rewards create winners and losers. While children are regaining their sense of confidence and competence after a traumatic time, it helps to focus on personal progress so that everyone can see themselves as a winner. Kids aren’t just choosing to perform lower on tests and demonstrate stunted skills–the chaos of the last few years has affected their development and tasks genuinely feel harder and more overwhelming to them than to pre-pandemic students. It is important to validate that as we also guide them to overcome it.

4. Create effective intervention systems.

Montessori offers deeper and more meaningful ways to learn concepts across the curriculum. However, what we’re seeing is that some children post-pandemic need an above-average amount of language and math drill for those “automaticity” areas such as letter sounds or math facts, and to be held accountable for doing the practice. Sometimes this means finding supplementary programs meant to build repetition to mastery for missing skills. If you find that, no matter how many times you re-present concepts and materials, children continue to struggle, they may need to see the information in new ways.

Montessori was a scientist. I believe she would have been responsive to the Covid impact on students and new student needs. Likely, she would say that children will learn their facts when they are ready, and to watch for sensitive periods. However, it seems like some sensitive periods were missed during the pandemic. This means that the children can still learn the skills, but it will not come as easily to them. Repeating the same lessons and presentations over and over is not the answer. Just like the 3-period lesson, we need to come at information from different directions to build neural pathways and aid retention. Whether it is Orton Gillingham for reading or Eureka Math for operations, find a system that compliments your Montessori teaching. I personally used my Orton Gillingham training to support struggling readers, and found that it had nice parallels to Montessori and could be easily integrated. I did not do as many group teacher-led experiences as OG dictates, but instead made it work for my classroom.

5. Enlist community.

Once you have clear systems and materials/lessons planned for intervention, build a community of supporters to whom you can delegate work. There are many people in the community that care for these students. Enlist college interns, grandparents, high school cadets, retired neighbors…call out to your community. Explain that Covid impacts are still haunting children, and that we need to come together to support our students in closing the gap and getting back on track. Have small groups planned for math facts, letter sounds, sight words, spelling, etc. and ask volunteers to train and commit to one afternoon a week for at least a quarter or a semester (for continuity). Some planning ahead and a careful volunteer training prove to be great investments of time and energy that have positive impacts on Covid student recovery. There is only one of you, and you already have the huge job of leading your classroom even under the best of circumstances. Build a support network for yourself by building a community of support for the children. It’s like the proverbs remind us:

“Many hands make light work.”

and

“It takes a village to raise a child.”