The class of 2021 has faced a high school experience unlike any in the past century.
In March, state officials closed schools. When students were permitted to return this summer, most did so remotely. Even after schools returned to in-person learning later in the school year, that return has been incomplete and often switched back and forth by governing boards.
It is only this week that Mingus students are returning to what they hope will be continued in-person learning for the remainder of the year after teachers were vaccinated, and even now many families are keeping their students home from school.
“At the beginning we all hated it,” Student Council President Kaila Bowers said. “Last year at the end we were like, ‘We’re not going to have that issue. We’re fine.’ All of a sudden school starts coming around the corner, and there’s no chance of coming back. It’s not looking good. It’s really hard …. I want to be in person.”
For Bowers, tasked with leading her class in student events in its last year, it was especially difficult to face a year when the class might never be able to gather together. But she did not want to back down from that challenge.
“At the beginning of this year, when I looked at it, I was devastated. I’m not going to have it normal. Are you kidding me?” Bowers said.
She came to see her role as finding a way to get the class to feel united despite the struggles.
“My whole mind has changed. If that’s what we’re going to have to do, that’s what we have to do at this point, because I’m desperate for something,” she said. “Not only for myself but for other seniors and students as well. We talked about ‘What if there’s no prom?’ and to me that was like ‘No, no, no. We have to do something.’”
While the school has shifted to virtual learning, the student council has similarly shifted to finding ways to make school events happen even if they were virtual. Around Homecoming, the school usually has a spirit week. Without students able to come to school, spirit week became a social media experience. Student council members sent out videos giving daily themes and asking their friends to wear their Mingus colors and post them on apps like Instagram, which the student council then reposted for all to see, in addition to giving out shirts for those who participated.
“That was Kaila’s main goal when she became president, saying ‘I want to increase our school’s spirit and participation,” said Kelcy Lyons, a Mingus geometry teacher who is also the student council advisor. “Now we were faced with this whole new challenge — we’re all virtual. How do we get students to feel connected, and be able to participate even if that means from their couch or their bed?”
Sports have been severely curtailed by the pandemic, with the teams that can play forced to do so in mostly empty arenas, missing their peers who would usually cheer them on. The solution that students have turned to has been to create posters, streamers and other decorations to let the players know that they are being supported.
“We have the student body on behalf of the winter athletes, [so that they know] ‘We still are supporting you. We still care about what’s going on,’” Bowers said. “[We are] trying to make the gym as lively as we can, without having people in it.”
Perhaps the most symbolic event of most senior years — and the one with the most potential to be ruined by the pandemic — is a prom. Student council has considered several options for an event, such as dividing up the junior and senior classes and banning outside guests to keep numbers down, requiring masks, and holding the event on the Verde Valley Fairgrounds or another outdoor venue as a way of keeping the potential for viral transmission low.
“We can’t really have an answer right now because we don’t know what that looks like,” Bowers said. “We’re trying to analyze it as we go.”
Even as students face difficulties from the weird year, there are also bright spots. Keeping students separate has made the times they have been able to interact that much more valuable and created kinship among many in the class through common struggle.
“I have been able to see a lot of people have more conversations,” Shelby Link, a fellow Mingus senior who has helped Bowers plan events, said. “We’re talking to people from middle school and elementary school, to rekindle relationships from back then. This is going to be a senior year on the books. The only people who understand what we’re going through is ourselves. We know that we’re not alone, and we know that our classmates feel the same way that we do.”
“Students showed resilience to deal with the unexpected,” Lyons said. “I kind of expected this tantrum, like ‘I can’t do that.’ But everyone’s just rising above …. The unexpected appreciation for what I do as a teacher — I’m getting appreciation from students like never before, appreciation from parents like never before, from fellow staff. We’ve had to embrace each other and support each other.”
