Recent Issues on America’s College Campuses “It feels like a normal football game,” Ms. Tonight, the entire stadium looks like a scene from prepandemic times, with few masks in sight and no social distancing beyond the usual high school stratifications. When the Billings school superintendent dropped the local mask mandate in early February 2022 - weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its own guidelines - the instruments shed their masks, too. “The distancing was a good idea,” she adds. The band members also spread out in the bleachers. Jensen, who plays baritone sax, explains that, in a woodwind instrument like hers, most of the air comes out through the keys, not the bell. Without a student section to cheer, the team “had to learn to be more peppy,” Emily says.Īnd last season, the brass and woodwind instruments sported cloth masks, a somewhat futile safety measure. Each player and band member could invite two parents, but there were no faithful fans or students wearing face paint. Last season, the pep washed over rows of empty seats. While the players run final practice plays on this cool, late-summer evening, the 100-plus members of the West High pep band blast a brassy rendition of the Green Day hit “Holiday.” Three drum majors - Carly Jensen, 18 Hanna Wildin, 17 and Emily Pfeffer, 17 - direct the band with exaggerated arm movements and high energy.įor the first time since the pandemic began, the band is playing for an actual crowd at a football game.
Knots of teens are milling around the outskirts of the football field at Daylis Stadium, an aging metal-bleacher venue shared by the three public high schools in Montana’s largest city.
It’s a half-hour before kickoff between the hometown Billings, Mont., West High Golden Bears and the Gallatin High Raptors from Bozeman. 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 McCreaīillings West High School, Billings, Mont. Last year, in the first days of school, we sent reporters across the country to see how students were feeling about returning.
In September 2021, after months of political infighting, students nationwide returned to classrooms, many for the first time since March 2020.Īnd 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. In September 2020, back to school meant logging into virtual class as the world awaited a return to normal. September 2019 was the last return to school before Covid-19 arrived and sent students home, teachers scrambling and classes fully online. This article is part of our Learning special report about how the pandemic has continued to change how we approach education.įor the last few years, each “back to school” has been radically different.
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