‘All I feel is stress.’ Student survey reveals crushing pressure in pandemic learning
Grades. Tests. Homework. Lack of sleep.
Students today are stressed out about the same things as students taking classes before the coronavirus completely restructured the education system, but the pandemic has added worrisome bumps along the road.
A survey of more than 10,000 high school students conducted during the fall shows that kids are experiencing high levels of stress and pressure, have little desire to be engaged with school work and are feeling disconnected from teachers and peers — sentiments that bear heavier weights on girls and non-white communities.
A school reform non-profit called Challenge Success, which is affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, teamed with NBC News to capture students’ well-being as they try to navigate education amid a pandemic. The survey posted this month incorporates student responses from fall 2018 through fall 2020, including over 75,000 kids from 86 high schools across the country.
“I would do anything for things to go back to normal. My school is giving too much work even though times are tough for everyone,” an anonymous 10th grader reported. “At first this was just a break from school, but now all I feel is stress, anxiety, and pain.”
Fifty-six percent of students reported their stress about school has increased during the pandemic; with students who identified as female (63%) feeling that burden more than those who identified as male (48%).
Black and Hispanic/Latinx students (63%) also felt more stress trying to learn during the pandemic than their white classmates (55%), a disparity also found in the general population when it comes to employment and access to medical care and COVID-19 vaccines.
And for those with college on the horizon, 59% reported feeling extra stressed about life after high school — again affecting students who identified as female (67%) more than those male (50%).
Although homework is usually a source of stress for many students, more than 50% of survey participants said the amount of homework they get is “too much,” with students reporting an average of three hours of homework per weeknight. That average stood at 2.7 hours a weeknight in the fall of 2019, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, 60% said the majority of their assignments were not “useful.”
“Because the school day has been shortened, teachers feel that it is okay to make the workload very large because it seems like we have more time,” another anonymous 10th grader said. “My more ‘essential’ classes give us 30-minute videos to learn concepts on our own, in addition to the nightly homework.”
Students are also sleeping less during the pandemic.
Forty-three percent of students said the amount of sleep they get each night has decreased since before the coronavirus hit, while only 6.6% get the recommended nine hours of sleep per night; 5% get four or fewer hours of sleep a night, the survey found.
Research shows that quality of sleep is associated with mental and physical health, something students also reported as being a major source of stress (32%) compared to before the pandemic (26%). Students who identified as female reported their mental health as sources of stress two times more than those who identified as male.
These feelings also translated to drops in effort at school, the survey found — 41% of students reported lower effort during class and 42% said they felt less engaged while learning.
At the same time, about half of the students said they felt disconnected from peers and teachers, who 28% of participants believe don’t “understand their life outside of school,” according to the survey. Another 28% said teachers don’t understand the challenges they’re experiencing during the pandemic.
On a more positive note, students said they generally have an adult they can talk over problems with, but fewer students from schools with primarily “socioeconomically disadvantaged students” reported having an adult to go to.
“To improve remote learning, our school could implement more emotional connections with teachers and other students. Especially check-ins on our mental and physical health. By understanding what is going on in our lives and what we’re going through, it would improve how much and what kind of work they give us. It would relieve a lot of stress,” an anonymous 12th grader said.
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 4:15 PM with the headline "‘All I feel is stress.’ Student survey reveals crushing pressure in pandemic learning."
