Covid’s Lost Generation Of Students.

Although, I officially quit teaching back in 2021, I’ve gone back as a long term substitute and for the 2023–2024 year, I accepted a full time job. I took the job at a small two teacher school where I teach all the subjects for the students in grades 6 to 12.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing the results of Covid among my students. For the older students, they had more of a foundation before schools went into distance learning mode but for the younger ones, it is hard. In math, my younger students struggle because they don’t know their times tables. In fact, many have difficulty subtracting because they still don’t fully understand borrowing.

In regard to reading, too many of my students lack the ability to understand what they’ve read. They struggle to answer simple questions about passages and often the question they answer is not the one asked. One other complication is none of them like to read. They also feel they are too old to have me read to them so I compromise by finding something on youtube they can listen to.

As far as writing, many of the older students struggle to write a simple sentence that answers the questions. The majority of my middle school students don’t have the ability to write a complete sentence. In fact, just getting them to write a simple answer is extremely difficult.

The other teacher has students in 1st to 3rd who missed out on the basics of learning to read, write, and learn the basics of mathematics. Both he and I are struggling to help get students to complete assignments, provide differentiation and scaffolding while trying to prepare them for state testing. Yes, we know the state testing is set well above their capabilities but we try.

In addition, we don’t have an interventionist, a title one tutor, or other support like that. What we do have is the cultural aid and two untrained aides who help out. I have the morning cultural aid work with the middle school students in language arts and social studies while I work in with high school students.

In the afternoon, I use the part time aid, part time custodian to take students out to work on the online coding class while I work with the other group in small groups math. I sometimes have him work one on one with a student who needs the individualized instruction but he hasn’t been here recently.

Add in to this mix, whenever Covid runs through the village, we have students stay home either because they have Covid, are a close contact, or the parents do not want them exposed. So I can’t move forward the way I want to with less than half the students in school.

I call these students the lost generation because they missed out on the normal progression of instruction in school, thus they have huge gaps in their knowledge base. I can only do so much towards filling in the gaps but honestly, I doubt they will regain what they lost during Covid unless the state is willing to invest a ton of money in providing support staff in the numbers needed.

The students who are now coming into school are the ones who will get the full experience of going from Kindergarten to 12th but everyone above about 3rd or 4th grade may have gaps that might never be filled. They may graduate with a lack of skills that may make additional training, college, or even working more difficult.

This is just my opinion but I know other teachers who have experienced this and say the same thing. let me know what you think, I’d love to hear.