One Denfeld High School student recalls the struggles of distanced learning

For the most part, the excitement for in-person classes revolves around no more online distance learning. One Denfeld senior happy to get back into in person classes after distanced learning affected her academics and her mental health.

Denfeld Senior Tessa Shower is starting the new school year with confidence! After she says that in the past her and her Students were, “all in this low hanging mood that was really scary for a lot of us."

For Shower, being a student during the pandemic was extremely hard. She says for her every aspect of class was even more difficult. Which caused her mental health to, “decreased so rapidly and so much.”

Tessa struggled with not being able to perform her best academically, resulting in her burning out. She says, “"there was many times where I was at a tournament or practicing and I was thinking I shouldn’t be here, I should be studying. But it was so hard to get myself to study. So you are kind of in this circle of I need to study but my mental health is so bad because I ‘m not around anybody, so I can’t.”

A member of the speech team, Tessa says she still felt cold and isolated even while at speech tournaments. She says that there used to be so many students competing for speech tournaments before COVID. So then because of the pandemic they just lost that friendship making opportunity.

And while struggling with her motivation Tessa Shower reached out to her head speech coach Jill Lofald who says, “we would meet virtually and [I would] just try to listen and just talk her through things. Let her just talk. Sometimes they just need to know that we are listening and that we really do care."

And now the two are back ready for another year of speech and in person classes at Denfeld High School. Getting their confidence and motivation back. Lofald says the best advice is to remember, “life, like an automobile, is driven from the inside out. So as long as we are always taking care of our heart, you know we are going to be ok.”