Hudson Valley seniors reflect on HS during pandemic: remote learning, hard-earned success

For the Class of 2023, high school is divided by stages of the pandemic.

Freshman year was normal until March, when school and everything else came to an abrupt halt.

Sophomore year was the hybrid year − some kids learned fully remotely, some went to school a couple days a week. By the spring, most schools were open five days a week with any number of precautions: masks and Plexiglas barriers and signage reminding them to social distance, sanitize and monitor for COVID symptoms.

Junior year, most students were in school, but debates and confusion raged over masks, vaccination requirements and quarantines.

This year, senior year, was the truest glimpse since the start of 9th grade of what high school would have been.

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"Looking back on it, it's kind of a blur almost," said Nanuet valedictorian Thomas Lanks.

Nirel Ayertey, Yonkers Middle High School valedictorian, said she didn't have concrete expectations for what high school would be like, but "I didn't realize how much I'd miss walking through the halls to get to one class or another or like sitting in a crowded cafeteria until the pandemic actually hit."

We asked valedictorians and salutatorians from high schools across the Lower Hudson Valley at the Carroll F. Johnson Scholastic Achievement Dinner last week what high school was like for the class of 2023.

Here's what they said.

Making friends, keeping connections

Students described how difficult it was to make friends over screens and find ways to maintain connections. Some made new, and unexpected, friends. Others didn't.

"I didn't really make new friends so much as I grew closer to the friends I already had," Ayertey said. She and her friends exchanged more texts and voice notes. "I think we bonded over the strangeness of the situation together."

Key opportunities for making friends were disrupted. For Sleepy Hollow valedictorian Carter Grose, those opportunities were theater and volleyball. But one unexpected result of the pandemic was that Grose made more friends who lived nearby so they could do COVID-safe outdoor activities together, like walking their dogs.

"Socially, it was very difficult to make new friends and talk with existing friends because everything was online and you couldn't really necessarily have the same level of bonding both out of school and in school," said Briarcliff High School valedictorian Tevin Kim.

When Madeline Rohde, one of Briarcliff's two salutatorians, returned to school during the hybrid period, many of her friends chose to continue learning remotely: "That was a little difficult for me since I didn't get to see them in person ever pretty much."

Annabelle Kung, the other Briarcliff salutatorian, faced the same problem, but from home. She decided to stay remote her entire sophomore year. "It was difficult to connect with my classmates," Kung said. "When I look back, I don't have very distinct memories of my sophomore year."

Kung was able to maintain friendships by still going to swim practice but knows some of her peers struggled more with making and maintaining friendships.

Lessons in independence

Keeping in mind that the students at the Scholastic Achievement Dinner are the highest academic achievers across the region, they still described remote schooling as challenging. These were students who were able to excel while learning independently, which was not the case for many of their classmates. Districts are still dealing with learning loss and some estimates say it could take several years for kids to catch up.

Many of the valedictorians and salutatorians described remote learning as a lesson in perseverance, problem solving and independence. In other words, they had to figure it out by themselves.

Kim said it forced him to find information on his own. He saw staying at home as a time to work on self improvement: learning how to take care of himself and work independently. When he returned to school, he appreciated it more because of what he and his class had to go through to get there.

Camille Ackerman, Nanuet salutatorian, found the academic effects of the pandemic more challenging than the social ones. While she didn't come back to school in person until her junior year, she said she still saw her friends regularly over the pandemic. The downside was that she felt like she lost a connection with her teachers. And for orchestra, students had to turn in videos of themselves performing, which wasn't ideal.

"I definitely wasn't participating as much, wasn't as engaged in the material I was learning, especially in the initial stages of lockdown," Rohde said. Her dance lessons looked much the same as Ackerman's orchestra's practice.

Rhinebeck valedictorian Joseph Hagerty, who went to the state championships for cross country, ran a lot during the shutdown, and used it as a time to explore music and start writing his own songs. "While there were times when it was really hard and there was a lot of isolation, I think I learned from those experiences and I have a lot of strengths now that I don't know if I would have had."

While COVID forced students to become independent learners, "I think it really like inhibited our ability to work as a team," said Isabella Levine, Sleepy Hollow's salutatorian, who won a scholarship at the dinner. The closeness of her class isn't the same as previous graduating classes, she said.

Coming out stronger

As high school graduates everywhere reflect on the last four years, there are many similar versions of the same pandemic story, but with different endings. The students interviewed for this story acknowledged the challenges: that their classes were harder, that they missed out on in-person events and relationships, and that they didn't get the traditional high school experience.

But they also said they explored their interests on their own, still made friends (some in unexpected ways) and learned how to be self-motivated and work independently.

Rohde said she has good memories of high school. In the early stages of the pandemic, with little to do, she appreciated getting to "do my own thing." And she said teachers figured out how to make hybrid learning engaging with games and activities that combined hybrid and in-person learning.

Greta LeHane, Rhinebeck salutatorian, said since her school is so small, she and her peers had a clear vision of what high school would look like, what activities they'd participate in and events they'd go to. "When that went away, we all kind of had to figure out what we were going to do and how we were going to interact with each other by learning and having fun in our teenage years." LeHane thinks it all worked out and she feels prepared for college.

Lanks, of Nanuet, said high school was all about adapting.

"It makes it more, like, satisfying to think that you went through that and you did it yourself," he said.

Nanuet is also small enough that everyone knows everyone, he said. While events got canceled, he thought the school did a good job of adapting and that students appreciated being able to have events at all − even those online. When COVID started to die down, it was extra rewarding to see friends and have in-person events, he said.

"Going through COVID as a high schooler was definitely a challenge, but as the Class of 2023 we persevered and were able to adapt," said Celia Marranzino, salutatorian of Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers. "And now we're going to take those skills and abilities from what we learned and we're going to do even better."

Contact Diana Dombrowski at ddombrowski@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @domdomdiana.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Hudson Valley HS seniors reflect on learning through pandemic