Abstract:

In the United States, different individual states had different lockdown requirements and protocols for their schools and students. For some states this period was almost two full years. Other states did not lock down at all. California schools, for instance had a lockdown period of almost two years while those in North Dakota did not lock down at all. Still other states had hybrid models with some student time spent in class a few days a week, with distance learning the rest of the time. In addition to the lockdown, there was significant social isolation required even while in class, and on campus. Although students have been back in classes for over two years as of this writing, the long term effects of the lockdowns continue to roil through the educational system, even at the university level. This paper and presentation will present some of these effects based on survey data from teachers and other education professionals. The consequences of the lockdown according to these surveys include significant academic and social emotional learning gaps. For instance, one of the effects of the lockdowns has been a series of serious student behavior problems since the return of students to full time, on campus schooling. This has resulted in a flood of American teachers leaving the profession, plus numerous other problems for schools. At the university level, even resident assistants (known as RA's) in university dormitories, who help students housed on US university campuses, have noted a huge uptick in suicidal ideations, as well as lack of self control of incoming "lockdown effected" freshmen as compared with previous groups. This has been attributed to the lack of social emotional development that would ordinarily have taken place during the two years of the lockdown. Such patterns are seen at other levels in the American education system as well. While the scope of the lockdown effects are numerous and perhaps too many to be covered within the scope of a short presentation and paper, interesting data has been collected from a variety of surveys, and will be presented here. Other contributing factors such as the increasing use of social media and technology probably also have roles in the lockdown phenomena, and will be mentioned as well. The presentation will provide a "snapshot" of the lockdown effects observed, with a somewhat more specific focus on California schools. As a result of these challenges, new ways of addressing these effects are called for. In part, it is hoped that this presentation will provide a springboard for discussion with others in the academic community on this topic.

Keywords:

COVID lockdowns, long-term effects, social emotional learning, academic gaps.