COVID-19 is a contagious disease that began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. Quickly spreading, President Donald Trump declared a national covid emergency on March 13th 2020. This caused a worldwide shut down affecting jobs, schooling, and everyone’s lives. For students at Atherton, this affected their late elementary/early middle school careers.
Callan Petruska (12) was in 6th grade when COVID-19 became a national emergency. He remembers when it first started, not many people took it seriously. Even doctors didn’t know how contagious it was, and he would have to go to the back alley to get to their office to get covid tests.
“I remember going home after they told us we weren’t allowed to wear masks to school, and having to sneakily put them on as we walked out,” said Petruska.
NTI, also known as non-traditional instruction, was used for online schooling during this time. Students would get on zoom calls in place of in person learning, this heavily impacted education. For Petruska, his school did not understand balancing the workload.
“I wouldn’t get out of bed for a solid week because I would wake up, work, fall asleep in the nest of my homework, and then just repeat the cycle over and over again,” Petruska said.
He ended up testing positive for Covid twice, but remembers getting sick at the beginning of the outbreak with the same symptoms.
For some students, NTI was very lackluster, not providing enough education. For Milo Westbrook (10), all he had to do was wake up, hop on a meeting, do two assignments, and then be done for the day.
“I feel like NTI is the reason why our generation is so far behind,” said Westbrook.
Westbrook was a fourth grader when we had our “extended spring break.”
“At first it was two weeks off, very on and off at first, and then one day they announced that we’re not going back to school for a year,” Westbrook remembers.
Nico Zitzer (12) was in sixth grade at the start of the outbreak. He remembers being home alone constantly, and getting to experiment with different things.
“Having to be by myself, I became such a loser and so weird, and then I eventually had to go back to school and deal with being weird because of the isolation,” Zitzer said, “but it really helped me find myself.”
One thing he enjoyed in middle school was anime, staying up late to watch it.
“I would stay up till 6 am, go to sleep for 3 hours, get on my zoom call and struggle to stay awake, then I’d watch more anime,” he remembers.
During NTI, he had to stay on his school’s zoom call all day from 9 am to pm.
“We had to wear our full school uniforms, and they would randomly check to make sure. It was very hard and I did not enjoy it in the slightest,” said Zitzer.
Although the test never came out positive, he’s positive he had covid at least twice.
“It was a weird time, but I had fun when I could,” Zitzer said.
The COVID-19 Pandemic was a very unique experience that affected everyone differently. It’s been six years since the outbreak, and students seem to be recovering from it just fine.
