All posts by Peter Lopata, Correspondent

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How COVID-19 affects schooling

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The COVID-19 pandemic has swept its way through the country, leaving its mark on the way.

One way the pandemic has drastically changed the norm in the country is the way schools have operated in 2020 and 2021. The common eight-hour school day five days a week has for the most part that was not been the format local schools have seen in the recent months.

Most locally, Northern Essex Community College has completely strayed from in person learning and took a nearly 100% online approach. NECC held strong to this approach despite most local high schools and elementary schools offering some in person learning from day one.

Fellow NECC student Jake Etter had these thoughts about the fully remote learning style; “It was very difficult getting accustomed to this type of learning after 12 years of being in a classroom.  It was an adjustment I was not quite ready for,” he said.

Etter most is not alone with these feelings.  However, this style of learning fits some students learning styles, for most it is not the easiest.

For local schools who have found their way back to fully in person, they have appreciated the gradual transition back and are relieved to be fully in person at this point.

Amy Lopata, my mother, and a fourth grade teacher at Bagnall Elementary in Groveland knows about how difficult it is to learn remotely and would encourage NECC to push for more in person learning.

“Earlier in the year were we using a hybrid model, but now we have transitioned to fully in person learning,” she said. “I feel like my students are more motivated now, because when they were spending more than half the school week at home it was full of distraction for them, but I cannot blame for that it is a challenging time we are going through. Now that they are back to a normal schedule, I have noticed a lot of improvement.”

The main difference between remote and in person learning is the motivation.  A lot of students would be more motivated to get work done if presented in the classroom.

Hopefully NECC can follow in the direction of local high schools in the near future.

 

Sports

March madness

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The storied tradition of the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament continues in 2021 after a one-year hiatus. The 2020 March Madness tournament was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that point March Madness was one of the very first things to be canceled and what COVID is today, was then unknown. Canceling the tournament last march seemed like a head scratching move, but was the right move based on what is known now. Fast forward to 2021, they NCAA faced the same issue as they did in 2020. The difference in 2021; March Madness was a go.

The classic 64 team format remained intact, and the NCAA held all teams in a bubble in Indianapolis to make the environment more controllable. According to The Washington Post teams were held to extremely strict protocols to ensure there will not be a public health crisis.

Teams and players are restricted to their hotel rooms and may only walk downtown Indianapolis through skywalks connected to their hotels. Mask mandates will also be always enforced except when on the court. The NCAA is taking every little precaution to make sure their biggest grossing event happens in 2021.

The extensive protocols set by the NCAA were in large part successful. 63 of 64 teams made it through multiple rounds of testing, leaving one outlier. The lone team to not make it through protocols was Virginia Commonwealth unfortunately ending their tournament run before it even started.

VCU was required to forfeit their first-round matchup against Oregon, putting an end to their season in unfortunate fashion.  Other than this one unfortunate situation, the NCAA has done an excellent job of keeping the tournament a safe environment for its student-athletes.  Local athletes can relate to VCU’s situation, of being shut down.

Pentucket High School Senior Michael Perlitch is remarkably familiar with this sort of situation.

Perlitch has had stints of his basketball and football seasons canceled due to COVID concerns within the program. Perlitch was asked to give advice to the VCU team after going through a comparable situation.

“It is definitely difficult for your season to end like that but be positive about the way your season went prior. Making the tournament is an accomplishment within itself.”

Perlitch gave some great insight and clamored for VCU to feel lucky they had a season to begin with.

A local athlete who competes collegiately, Will Coppola also had some thoughts on this. Coppola is a sophomore on the Saint Mikes University Mens Cross Country team and graduated from Pentucket High School in 2019. Saint Mikes had their entire season canceled in the fall because of COVID.

However, Coppola understands why March Madness was allowed but not Cross country, but he still offered his advice to VCU, “Don’t let one game getting canceled prevent you from doing other important things in life.”

Coppola really put it in perspective from a fellow collegiate athlete.