Back to School and Back to Normal. Or at Least Close Enough.
As school began this year, we sent reporters to find out how much — or how little — has changed since the pandemic changed everything.
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This article is part of our Learning special report about how the pandemic has continued to change how we approach education.
For the last few years, each “back to school” has been radically different.
September 2019 was the last return to school before Covid-19 arrived and sent students home, teachers scrambling and classes fully online. In September 2020, back to school meant logging into virtual class as the world awaited a return to normal. In September 2021, after months of political infighting, students nationwide returned to classrooms, many for the first time since March 2020.
And this fall? Students and teachers are again returning to campus, but this time in a new environment — in which Covid remains an ever-present threat, but no longer frames our everyday lives — as the country collectively adjusts to a new normal.
Last year, in the first days of school, we sent reporters across the country to see how students were feeling about returning. This year, as school began, we sent reporters into the field again, to see how much — or how little — has changed, and to answer a simple yet pivotal question: Where are we now? — Megan McCrea
Zak Jokela for The New York Times
In Billings, Mont., Friday night football games are again drawing excited crowds, and the spectators — and musical instruments — have shed their Covid masks.
In a Chicago elementary school, reminders about mask wearing are now woven into orientation.
And at a high school in suburban Missouri, officials are considering holding the first homecoming parade in 24 years.
In short, our reporters’ findings have been as varied as the schools themselves.
Below are scenes from 13 schools, spanning pre-K to college, captured over two weeks in early September.
- Liberty Bell Junior-Senior High School, Winthrop, Wash.
- Billings West High School, Billings, Mont.
- MCA Academy, Miami
- Patrick Henry High School, Minneapolis
- Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
- Northwest High School, Cedar Hill, Mo.
- Brooklyn Science and Engineering Academy, Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Vare-Washington Elementary School, Philadelphia
- Downey High School, Downey, Calif.
- Southern Methodist University, Dallas
- James Shields Elementary School, Chicago
- Edgewood City Schools, Trenton, Ohio
- Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Los Angeles
Liberty Bell Junior-Senior High School, Winthrop, Wash.
Fifteen seniors saunter into Room 126, where hand-painted mountains on a wall evoke the North Cascades outside. The teens are dressed up (it’s picture day), and sipping iced drinks. The teacher, Elyse Darwood, chats with a student about ranching — she and her husband own 85 horses and mules here in the Methow (pronounced MET-how) Valley — then strolls to the light switches.
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