3 Years of Outbreak: A Flashback to COVID-19

This spring marks the three-year anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in America. 

While over a year has passed since Governor Kim Reynolds declared an end to the coronavirus public health emergency, the detrimental effects of COVID-19 are still seen today.

School is a significant part of any teenager’s life, and COVID-19 put millions of students worldwide in an unfamiliar situation they had to navigate independently. With school’s sudden absence, students quickly began to see the effects on their mental health, social skills and academics. Adam Werley, an English teacher at Northwest High School, stated, “[The pandemic] was really hard on everybody’s mental health, but when you were right in it, you couldn’t see it.” 

 However, quarantine had different effects for each person who experienced it. Some students noticed a decline in their grades during online education; others were able to thrive in a more self-paced environment. While some people felt lonely and suffered from the loss of their social life, others enjoyed the solitude COVID-19 provided. Sophomore Jack Hulten attested, “COVID probably made my [mental health] better; I had more time to think and reflect, and I didn’t have so many external things coming in and messing with me. I could choose what I wanted and didn’t want to deal with.”

Education worldwide was stunted in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and it is no different in Waukee. In a short time, the Waukee School District needed to figure out how to transition traditional education into 100 percent online learning. Understandably, the transition was not seamless, and many students struggled to keep up. Associate Principal Kim Tierney stated, “As a result of COVID and the heaviness of 2020, there are some academic gaps that exist in students because of missing learning.” The shift was a challenge for teachers, too, as they had to relearn how to help their students in a new environment. “Not being able to build those relationships and make connections was challenging. And it clearly shifted; What a good day looks like in class was massively different online versus in school,” recounted Werley.

While the virus is not as prevalent in everyday life as it once was, students and teachers must face the silent repercussions of the pandemic every day. Reflecting on the past three years, it is easy to see the damage inflicted, but also how the Waukee community has grown.