New York students face anxiety and fear as they continue their pandemic education

The pandemic continues to weigh heavily on the mental health of the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren, their parents, and especially on the teachers tasked with keeping them on an academic path. The death of friends and loved ones, new variables and the potential for infection, changes in protocols such as wearing masks or isolation after infection, and endless discussions about in-person or distance learning are just some of the issues affecting school communities.

New York City Council member and former Manhattan Borough President Jill Brewer notes that even determining how a student is marked who has missed class can affect a student’s future. “Parents may want the child to stay home because of the outbreak at school and are afraid the child will get infected and bring them home,” Brewer said. “But right now, if a student is not sick, being marked absent can affect her grades and her academics.”

Educators must deal with these pressures and a variety of other issues, from covering sick or absent colleagues and keeping frequently absent students on the academic schedule, as well as the epidemiological problems found in all schools, such as food insecurity in students’ homes and parental abuse, which It can be exacerbated by learning at home in close quarters. For these and other reasons, mental health is becoming a more important issue in schools.

Hundreds of anxious New York City public school students walked out of class on January 11 to demand online lessons for those who want to stay home. Students cited the absence of teachers and fear of the spread of infection from the omicron variant of COVID-19 among their reasons for wanting to study remotely. Similar protests have occurred in other cities across the country, with some students threatening to boycott in-person lessons over the use of Omicron.

“Students have faced enormous challenges during the pandemic, and many have been affected by the pain, stress and trauma that the pandemic has brought New Yorkers,” said Department of Health and Mental Health spokeswoman Victoria Merlino.

Additionally, some schools have reported higher rates of violence and conduct since students have returned to in-person classes. Other schools report students entering school in pajama bottoms, and that children exhibit behavior not typical of their age group, but of the last age group they interacted with during in-person classes. Mental health is also a concern for colleges across the country, with officials fearing that the isolation caused by distance learning has left many students feeling depressed and even suicidal.

How New York City plans to deal with such issues is unknown at this time. The Adams administration and the Department of Education did not respond to several emails seeking comment on how the pandemic has prompted mental health issues affecting schoolchildren in the city.

But United Teachers Union Associate Executive Director Kristen Schuch spoke to City & State about what members see in the city’s community schools, schools that stay open longer than regular public schools and provide more social services. Schuch directs UFT social workers and professionals working in those schools.

“In elementary schools, students experience anxiety and fear,” Schuch said. “There is the stress of going to school and not feeling completely safe. Then you have the students who have had a huge loss, a lot of disruption, as it has happened to all of us, but it manifests itself differently with the children.

“In middle and high school, there’s still stress, anxiety, and trauma as well as a slight increase in violence and suicidal thoughts. Some of the stress is kind of fading out now, but you add going back to school while dealing with a new variable, and there’s more stress,” she added.

Schuch said teachers are “under similar pressure.” “They are trying to deal with the same situations, they or their colleagues get sick and they have to figure out how to cover them.”

She said the pandemic has prompted UFT to “put in place more social and emotional programs for staff, so that they can support students and parents, so they can also support themselves and their children, and then the teachers.” This translates to more group and one-on-one counseling sessions for students and more house calls for parents.

Confederation of Trade Unions also has 45 employees, six of whom are social workers who serve with the Ministry of Education’s social workers, and administer programs in 32 schools. “Our social workers have done more checks” during the pandemic, she said. “They’re touching every kid in the building to see how they’re doing, and they’re doing a lot of groups, so you can really work one-on-one with the students in the groups.”

Shuch said social workers are developing programs for parents, too. “A lot of parents would like to talk to someone, to say this is difficult,” she said.

Community schools have also increased counseling for school staff, offering the same social and emotional programs that students and families receive. “We had a lot of meetings to check in and see what the staff were doing, and to make sure they had space and time to take care of themselves,” she said.

“They make it work because they have to,” she added.