COVID-19 has affected the lives of so many students around the world—including at Venice High. With the rise of the Omicron variant and debates over vaccines, students have had to stay home, wear masks, and adjust to a whole new version of living which has already lasted almost two years. 

An anonymous sophomore student who tested positive for COVID-19 has had to stay home as the spring semester welcomed back students who tested negative. Though the student is now back at school, he did not have to go to class through Zoom, since teachers are no longer required to host meetings during class time for those in isolation. 

The student has had to painfully adjust. “I feel like this affects those in quarantine, even if you do the work and assignments online,” said the student in a virtual interview. “You won’t get to listen to the teacher and get the same help to do the work as those listening to the teacher live in person.”

More than 65,000 students have tested positive entering this semester, leaving students to work with the newly adjusted COVID-19 protocols set by LAUSD. 

Freshmen Jeremy Arnold and Ruby Martinez have both noticed large gaps in the number of students in their classes.

“There have been many students missing in all of my classes,” Arnold said. “It has also been very quiet because of the lack of people.” 

Martinez is worried about her fellow classmates’ health and safety.

“I have seen students missing and it worries me because I hope they’re okay,” she said. 

Arnold is on the water polo team, and in the first week of the Spring Semester, was not able to get in the water due to COVID-19. 

“It has made some of my classes harder because I am not allowed to practice, putting our team way behind,” he said.

Teachers have been altering their approach to teaching this semester due to all of the cases. Some teachers have been offering Zoom classes and others have been giving virtual makeup work. 

Math teacher Lisa Thorne has changed the structure of her class units, rearranging the content, so students who are working from home have the opportunity to work asynchronously. 

“I changed the order of units so that the first unit was easy to kind of do on your own,” Thorne said. “Or if you didn’t finish it until the whole end of the semester, it wouldn’t keep you from being able to do other stuff.”

Accepting the new changes can be difficult. “This is the new normal, you just can’t cover as much,” Thorne said. “I’m in acceptance.”