Documenting History: Student Experiences as Primary Sources During COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges and opportunities for students. Beyond grappling with remote learning and disrupted social lives, some students found themselves uniquely positioned to contribute to the historical record. This article explores how students, through assignments and personal initiatives, documented their experiences during the pandemic, effectively becoming primary sources for future generations. It examines the impact of remote learning, mental health struggles, and the innovative ways educators adapted to these challenges.

Student Perspectives as Historical Records

A primary source is a diary, record, or document that provides insight into the time it was created. During the pandemic, students' journals, reflections, and creative projects served as valuable primary sources, capturing the nuances of their experiences.

One example of this comes from Jordynn Jack, director of the English and Comparative Literature Department’s Writing Program, who transitioned her course to remote learning and found a way for her students to contribute to the historical record just by doing their homework. This class was focused on engagement with campus resources. The class was about to start a unit on digital writing when we began remote learning, so the course was easily adapted to suit our circumstances.

Students like Woolard and Eskew contributed to this historical record through their writing. Woolard said, “I only write occasionally about school; mostly I’ve been documenting how my schedule has changed and how there’s so few things to do while stuck at home." Eskew added, “It’s a day-to-day record of my reaction to the first major sporting event, an NBA game, being cancelled because of COVID-19, then transitions into my realization that the outbreak would affect my season too."

The Shift to Remote Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic had a wide-ranging and long-lasting impact on education in the United States. The sudden shift to remote learning platforms decreased instructional time and hindered student learning. Many students struggled to stay focused in class, and they were less likely to seek help when needed. Teachers were required to redesign lesson plans and find innovative ways to keep students engaged. In many cases, teachers were forced to eliminate sections of their curriculum due to their limited instructional time.

Digital Divide

Disparities in internet access exacerbated existing educational inequities for Black and Brown communities. As a result, children spent less time learning and were more likely to drop out of school altogether.

Mental Health Challenges

Many students experienced significant mental health struggles after the shift to remote learning. Students were increasingly isolated, spending more time on devices and getting very little physical activity - all of which contributed to increased stress, anxiety, and depression.

Jack noted, “The psychological effects of journal writing have been proven therapeutic, but I didn’t want to force students to dwell on their feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic if they felt it wasn’t helpful." Flick said, “I’ve been mostly solitary during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I haven’t fully processed yet how I feel about the situation."

Extracurricular Activities

While classroom learning shifted to a remote model during the pandemic, extracurricular activities were typically suspended altogether. Thirty percent of all students (14.7 million students) were chronically absent, nearly double pre-pandemic rates (16% in 2018-19, the final school year fully unaffected by COVID). These averages mask even worse educational outcomes for students of color, kids in immigrant families, and children from low-income families or attending low-income schools.

Innovative Approaches to Education

Despite the challenges, educators found innovative ways to engage students and address learning loss.

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Curriculum Adjustments

Teachers were required to redesign lesson plans and find innovative ways to keep students engaged. In many cases, teachers were forced to eliminate sections of their curriculum due to their limited instructional time.

Utilizing Primary Sources

The Digital Public Library of America’s inaugural Education Advisory Committee helped to build a collection of one hundred free Primary Source Sets for educators and students across the country. As a result, the Primary Source Sets are strongly influenced by professional expertise as educators. They are designed with the flexibility to use in a multitude of creative and innovative ways across grade levels and structured to appeal to both students and peers. Each set has an accompanying teaching guide, but it’s not a lesson plan; it’s a set of questions designed to get students critically thinking about the sources and what they reveal about our past.

Addressing Learning Loss

Expand access to intensive tutoring for students who are behind in their classes and missing academic milestones. States should take advantage of all their allocated pandemic relief funding to prioritize the social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being of students. As long as funds are obligated by the specified date, states and school systems should address chronic absence, so more students return to learn. While few states gather and report chronic absence data by grade, all of them should. Improving attendance tracking and data will inform future decision-making. Policymakers should invest in community schools, public schools that provide wrap-around support to kids and families.

Connecting COVID-19 to Science Education

COVID-19 creates an opportunity for science classrooms to relate content about viruses to students’ personal experiences with the pandemic. Science classrooms have the potential to pique students’ situational interest by discussing COVID-19 topics that are important to students, which can increase their academic performance, content knowledge, attention, and engagement in learning about viruses. Moreover, classroom instruction about COVID-19 by teachers has shown to alleviate students’ stress and anxiety.

Student Interests and Information Sources

A survey of 224 high school students analyzed their responses to six open-ended questions. The study examined student interest and information-seeking preferences for COVID-19 at the beginning of and during the global pandemic. In addition, it documented student concerns about the crisis and its overall impact on students’ daily lives. The results are presented in order of the research questions. The presentation of each research question includes a data table, which displays the themes identified, a description of each theme, an exemplar student response that demonstrates the theme, and the overall percentage of respondents who expressed the theme in their responses.

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Key Findings

The study found that students expressed the most interest in topics related to the origin of COVID-19 and vaccines. Their greatest concerns included contracting the virus or someone they know contracting the virus and vaccine distribution. Of the sample, only 6.7% reported using their teachers as their source of COVID-19 information.

The Role of Media

In the digital era, students are exposed to a vast array of COVID-19 related information sources-tv news, social media, online news-with varying degrees of credibility. This makes deciphering factual versus fictitious information challenging for students. Importantly, 45% of respondents expressed uncertainty over the validity of the information they acquired. Classroom discussion around the most used information sources can help students identify biases in the media they consume and expand their digital literacy skill set.

Socio-Scientific Issues

Connecting students’ interests about COVID-19 to classroom instruction allows students to apply their funds of knowledge to science content about the virus. Classroom discussion related to the COVID-19 pandemic is relevant to students’ lives, presents complex issues that are influenced by social factors like politics and economics, and requires negotiation of science as it connects to authentic problems in society. These criteria make COVID-19 instruction an ideal opportunity for science teachers to implement a socio-scientific issues (SSI)-based teaching approach. By engaging with SSI, students develop an understanding of science content that has implications for society.

The Enduring Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted student learning and development, resulting in significant learning loss and an increase in mental health challenges. Further, the pandemic exacerbated existing racial inequities and worsened achievement gaps.

Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said, “Kids of all ages and grades must have what they need to learn each day, such as enough food and sleep and a safe way to get to school, as well as the additional resources they might need to perform at their highest potential and thrive, like tutoring and mental health services."

Recovery and Progress

While there has been progress nationally, recovery from pandemic learning losses has varied significantly across the country. Notably, achievement gaps - particularly between low-poverty and high-poverty areas - have persisted, and in many cases, worsened.

However, some states are showing encouraging signs. Illinois, Mississippi, and Louisiana are currently outpacing their pre-pandemic achievement in reading.

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