LONG BEACH, CA- There are a bunch of problems and holes in classrooms around Long Beach coming back from winter break because of the surge of covid/omicron cases. In most of the classes at Wilson High School, more than a third of kids aren’t attending classes or school because they either have covid or omicron and have to quarantine to keep them safe and healthy. With this surge of covid and omicron on the rise right now a third of classes are absent because of the rise of this pandemic. Class is still functioning and there is still class in person so nothing really changed, just the amount of kids in class reduced from before winter break and more subs than what it was before winter break too because teachers have been sick with covid and have been at home. A lot of lessons were changed because of the number of kids that are absent because so many kids are out of class because of this sickness, so many original plans have been changed or have been directed to a mini-lesson so that the kids that are absent have a fair chance as the rest of the class with the main lesson at hand. 

I have talked to some students that have been stuck at home because of covid and the information that they shared with me sounded like they were bored out of their minds. Anthony Ruiz is a sophomore that goes to Wilson High school, Anthony was one of many victims of Covid-19 and has fallen sick to this disease. He told me that he was at home resting trying to recover as fast as he could, he had a fever, runny nose, and a headache. Anthony was at home for this whole procedure and was quartering in his room away from his family members the whole time. He told me that he was very bored at home and couldn’t do as much as he thought he could when he was in their quartering. He also was productive while he was quartering too and wasn’t doing just anything.  

Anthony did a lot of his school assignments on canvas and wasn’t totally isolated from school and his classes, so he did his assignments and other school-related activities on canvas so he’s not completely out of the game. He also told me that he was mostly resting and just trying to recover from this because he wanted to get back to school and didn’t want to be home anymore. He told me that he was bored the whole time and didn’t know what to do. He found himself stuck some days and didn’t know what to do after he finished his canvas assignments, also during those assignments he didn’t really know what he was doing at times and didn’t know what to do in general because of the fact that he had covid and that he was missing out on class and the information the teacher is teaching them. Some of his symptoms lasted only 2 days and others lasted a lot longer than he anticipated. When he got back from quarantine from covid and went back to school, he said that he felt like he missed a lot of lessons and a lot of information between that time he was quarantined because he wasn’t actually there learning with his classmates and wasn’t in that learning environment. 

Classes coming back from winter break are way different from what they were before including the size of the classes and the number of students that are attending these classes. We are slowly coming back though from this giant covid wave that we have been through, students, teachers, and school staff are coming back and getting over the sickness that they have caught over break, so we are coming back to normal slowly.