WHEELING — As the Class of 2021 graduates and sets off for the next chapter of their life, they say they don’t feel the book on their high school years was cut short.
They believe they are ready for college, and college educators are anxious to welcome this group they see as already overcoming many challenges.
West Virginia students graduating in 2021 did not experience a typical or full academic year during any of their four years in high school
The first two years of their high school experience were interrupted by state teachers strikes, while their years as juniors and seniors were abbreviated by pandemic concerns and intermingled with virtual learning sessions.
None of this seemed to stop those destined to achieve.
John Marshall High School senior Zara Zervos excelled both academically and athletically while in high school.
She was named both U.S. Presidential Scholar and U.S. Presidential Scholar in Career and Technical Education based on her efforts in high school. In addition, she earned first-team all-state honors in both cross country and soccer and was a winner of the West Virginia High School Heisman Award.
“It’s definitely one of those things that’s almost funny to look at — we had four years of high school, and something happened every year of it,” Zervos said. “I don’t think it’s impacted my high school experience at all.
“I still feel like I’ve done everything, it’s all been offered to me, even throughout these setbacks. I feel like Marshall County Schools was really pushing forward during it.”
Zervos will major in aerospace engineering at West Virginia University.
Wheeling Park High School senior Francesca Malinky received numerous honors this week during WPHS awards day ceremonies. Among these were two scholarships from Kent State, the
Heather Schultz Memorial Scholarship, the Eric Carder Scholarship, a Philanthropic Educational Organization International Scholarship, and the Bordas and Bordas anti-bullying scholarship.
“I feel very confident to go on to college,” Malinky said. “I think the teachers at Wheeling Park (had a difficult situation) during the strike and it was hard because it was unchartered territory. By my senior year, everyone was working really hard to make sure we got the education we needed.
“I think they did a great job of doing that.”
She doesn’t feel missed out on any typical high school opportunities at WPHS.
“I don’t feel I have been robbed of any experiences or memories — except maybe some school dances,” Malinky said. “I was still involved with school athletic training, and still involved with the career and technical program at Park.”
She will major in communications at Kent State with a goal of a career in digital marketing.
College educators appear to be looking forward to meeting the class of 2021 students, and they see them as students who already have been toughened by the challenges they face.
“I think that the demands and challenges imposed on the Class of 2021 are far reaching; between the teachers’ strikes and the dual pandemics — i.e., COVID-19 and racial injustice — they have been forced to adapt and circumvent foreseen and unforeseen obstacles,” said Rawn Boulden, assistant professor in the department of counseling and learning sciences at
West Virginia University.
“While the impact of these disruptions have immensely impacted students’ social-emotional wellbeing, more than we currently realize, I think that they have acquired a set of nonacademic knowledge, skills, and abilities that make them unique from practically all high school graduates within the century.”
Still, he thinks college educators will first need to be sensitive to the “bevy of challenges faced by the incoming students,” including academic and social-emotional hardships.
“It would be insensitive to think of the upcoming semester as ‘business as usual,'” he said. “Our students are reeling and grieving over several losses — loved ones, high school traditions they missed out on, and the normalcy that they were used to, to name a few.
“While I think college educators have high expectations of students, it would be remiss of them not to consider how all of the tumult the Class of 2021 experienced will not suddenly disappear when they enter academic settings.”
Joe Lane, provost and dean of faculty at Bethany College, said the high school graduates of 2021 “have had an experience unlike any other and there are many things we don’t know about their preparation for college.”
“Some students have not been seated in class for more than a few weeks since the final grading period of their junior year, and each student reacted differently to the shifts in modalities and expectations,” he said. “We expect that some students have become more resilient and independent, and others may not have been challenged or doing their best work for some time.
“We expect that we must be prepared to help students assess their own preparation and level of performance early in their college careers, and we expect that many students will need extra time and work in certain subjects where the interruptions have potentially set some students back,” Lane said.
(Staff writer Alan Olson contributed to this article.)
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Class of 2021 Accustomed To Going With the Flow - Wheeling Intelligencer
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