WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) – A new study conducted shows that middle and high school students in Marathon County are feeling anxious about returning to school, but it’s not the coronavirus itself that’s causing their concerns.
The study featured 5 focus groups with 47 middle and high school students representing 13 different schools from 9 different districts in Marathon County.
“One of the most compelling themes we found underlying all the focus group discussions was a real high level of anxiety and stress-related to returning to school in the fall,” explained Sharon Belton, executive director at the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service, the organization that conducted the study. “In the context of our study and when we talked to students, returning to school doesn’t necessarily mean returning to school on-site in a physical school building. Some, indeed, were returning to school on-site and some were returning in more of a blended or highbred model.”
Belton says that while COVID-19 is still on kid’s minds, the study showed that a majority of students feel that schools are taking positive steps by requiring masks and social distancing, but was showing growing concerns about having access to their teachers, friends and extracurricular activities.
“How they were going to learn; what avenues were there going to be for them to connect and learn from their teachers; with their fellow students; what kind of social opportunities they would have that they would normally have in a traditional school environment,” Belton said. “One of the real negative things that students experienced about learning from home in the spring was the inability to access their teachers when they need to get questions answered. For some students, it really prevented them, maybe, from making progress on an assignment or they might have become frustrated and set it aside, and what we heard from the students is that they really want to be learning actively from their teachers.”
Belton says the study, which can be found here, can be useful for districts throughout the state of Wisconsin and the nation as administrators and teachers work to provide the best education for students during the pandemic and beyond.
If resources are available, Belton said she hopes WIPPS will be able to conduct another study later in the school year.
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