The Northview community reflects on living a year with the COVID-19 pandemic and looks to the future

Suhani Mahajan, Staff Writer, and Noelle Reid, Staff Writer

Last March, as the end of her senior year approached, Northview alum Zainab Quadri did not think the coronavirus was worrisome - much less that COVID-19 would be declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, one that would spread and affect millions in the year to come. Quadri’s birthday was just a few days away when Fulton County had a COVID-19 scare, causing schools to shut down for two days and then for a planned two weeks. 

“I was so excited. I was about to turn 18 in March, and I was like I can do whatever I want - to go out and do this, do that,” Quadri said. “I remember when COVID-19 first happened. The first breakout that was pretty close to us, I was in my last class, and we were like, ‘Looks like we don't have school tomorrow - field day!’”

But just as quarantine began, Quadri’s father and brother caught the disease, making her quarantine even more limiting. She remained in her room for nearly three weeks, unable to even go out in her car for drives. She ended up spending her birthday this way, too. What was most heartbreaking to Quadri, though, was the loss of her senior year.

“Late March, I was like there's no way we're going to be going back to school, but I hoped, ‘Okay, well, maybe we'll go back to school in May or April,’” Quadri said. “I remember in our senior group chat, we were like, ‘No, no, don't worry about it. What are we still doing for prom?’ But then, mid-April, we were like, ‘Yeah, there's no going back.’”

Around the same time, French teacher Catherine Francisse, had just canceled her spring break vacation with her family. Since her son works in public health in New York, the seriousness of COVID-19 was clear, though it originally took her by surprise.

“What I vividly remember is a few students who came with masks, and I didn't understand why at first.  And then a week later, we closed the school, and that was it,” Francisse said. “I never thought it would last this long. Ever. In my whole life, I never imagined something like this. None of us were prepared to even think it because it was just a two-week quarantine at first.” 

As school shifted online for the remainder of the semester, Francisse recalls that even in late-spring, much was still unknown about COVID-19, and her focus was on supporting her students.

“I think when we were teaching online last year, teaching stopped being a priority because we only taught you one time a day or one time a week. I honestly felt bad for the kids because we had worked hard, and then they lost all their practice,” Francisse said.

Meanwhile, as in-person school was postponed for longer and longer, Principal Brian Downey had growing responsibilities to deal with, including the uncertainty looming over the coming fall semester.

“Your heart immediately went out to last year’s seniors because you quickly saw that spring semester, all those senior moments, just getting wiped away,” Downey said. “There are timetables that we work on -  going back to last spring, it was week by week, day by day, - those were sort of the little time lenses that we were looking at. ‘Maybe let's just get through the school year, then over the summer, everything will smooth out, and August will be back to normal.’ It was a tough psychological game that we probably all played with ourselves, trying to get through these weeks and months.”

Like Downey and most others, current senior Maha Zubairi also did not anticipate COVID-19 spreading on such a large scale and carrying on for such a long period of time. In fact, after the last school year ended, Zubairi believed that things would go back to normal by the end of the summer by the latest.

“I didn't think it would be mandatory virtual school,” Zubairi said. “COVID-19 started becoming really serious, personally, beginning of my senior year. A lot of my family here were super safe about it, and we have the resources to battle what's going on, but some of my extended family and some people that are more closely related to me in my home country died of COVID-19. It was in August and September when it became really serious to me.”

COVID-19 did not recede over the summer as was first predicted, and uncertainty still loomed over the new school year as the first day drew closer. Downey’s worry grew as the district changed school reopening plans every few days up until the very last week.

“I was stressed out of my mind during that time period. The school year was like three weeks away, and I didn't have a handle on what was going to happen. ‘What was it going to look like? What are we doing? What's my staffing going to look like?’” Downey said. “I wasn't involved in any of that decision-making; I couldn't control any of it.”

As challenges arose and were dealt with, Downey accepted that some things are out of his control, realizing that some of his stress regarding the future is self-induced and avoidable. In this way, he has grown to worry less over situations because he knows the details will fall into place in time.

“It's okay not to have all the information, all the answers, today,” Downey said. “Allowing myself to go ‘Don't stress about not knowing today. I'll know when I need to know,’ [is] easier said than done sometimes, but just driving home that mind shift has been very helpful.”

There have been many changes over the past year, but teachers have endured and adapted to the shifting circumstances. In comparison to last March, Francisse has now found many new ways to engage her students in an online forum. Despite these new techniques, however, she does not quite like online teaching, believing that a foreign language, at least, cannot be taught through screens and microphones alone.

“I think human beings adjust to anything if need be. This is the best we can do in the circumstances we have - that I agree - but it's not a long-term thing,” Francisse said.  “I mean, it’s not teaching.”

Outside the classroom, too, the pandemic has forced people to grow and take on new perspectives toward the world. Quadri reflects on how she has evolved as a person over the past year.

“I think that I have matured a lot. I’ve become more independent, and I know how to deal with situations way better. I feel like I'm more prepared for the world,” Quadri said. “I think when you're a teenager, you're in your own world, and then, because I was quarantined, I just realized that there are difficulties in every situation.”

Although Quadri is personally aware of the gravity of the situation society has been placed in by the pandemic, she feels that such awareness needs to be more wide-spread. She has learned about the state of society by watching how people have acted through the pandemic so far, witnessing far too much downplaying of COVID-19’s severity.

“I think COVID-19 could have been handled better,” Quadri said. “There are just ignorant people who care more about themselves than they do other people. They chose to go out and not wear masks and have big group gatherings and go to parties. If they had just listened, worn masks and social distanced, we probably wouldn't have been in this situation for more than a couple of months. But we're about to go into our year of being stuck in this situation.”

But no matter what, life goes on, and Zubairi, who has already received her first dose of the vaccine as a legal caretaker for her grandmother, plans for her college life next year to be different from the senior year she is going through now. 

“I probably will just go on with life as normal because I'll be on my own and independent and in no direct harm to my family,” Zubairi said. “I'm going to try to be as safe as I can, but if over the summer everyone’s vaccinated, then I think people including myself deserve to go out as normal.”