Gustavo Aguilar, Alex Alejo, Guadalupe Laureano Carranza, Jamie-Lynn Juco, Nareli Juquilita Lopez and Adriana Rios-Cruz
May xiii, 2021

In a year that many have considered lost, we have learned much.

We learned that we have many gifts and talents. We got better at our hobbies and discovered new hobbies, too. We learned that we are good at chipping in — nosotros can cook for our families and take skillful intendance of our siblings. Nosotros learned how to fix things and do chores properly. Nosotros also learned how to manage our time, avert procrastination, exercise self-care and dear, and appreciate and enjoy the present.

Our school lives were transformed just equally much. Nosotros are members of the Student Advisory Board of the UCLA Community School. When the coronavirus changed life equally we knew information technology, nosotros came together to exist sure that student voices were heard as our school moved to online learning.

Our master, Leyda Garcia, asked us to make a research projection on our situation. In doing and then, we were able to shape our teachers' and administrators' understanding of our experience with school during a pandemic and lead efforts to improve information technology.

We started concluding fall by designing and conducting a bilingual online survey for students. More than 60% of our peers responded. We spent weeks analyzing results — figuring out how unlike groups of students were doing and how best to share what we constitute. We learned how to lawmaking students' open-ended responses with the assist of a researcher from UCLA and clarify these data.

We figured out ways to show our findings through tables, word clouds and graphics. We found, for example, that our peers struggled to residual a number of boosted responsibilities outside of school as a result of the pandemic. Like us, students shared that they had to treat younger siblings or their older relatives, cook and practice chores because their parents were working. Some took on outside jobs for pay — in some instances more than one job — to assist their families.

We discovered that students, based on course, differed in how useful they found school-provided resources, i.east., net hot spots, computers, breaks during course, allowing late work, meditation/yoga. We as well conducted form-level focus groups to deepen our understanding of students' feelings regarding what and how they were learning.

In addition to edifice skills as researchers, nosotros gained insights into our community and online learning. While these are challenging times for all, we found that our wants and needs are necessarily dissimilar.

Some students want to experience more engaging assignments and expressed that they spend likewise much time doing "busy work."

Others disagreed and felt assignments were just correct given the circumstances and that they have been able to spend more time reflecting on and exploring topics of interest to them.

Lesser line: Information technology is difficult for our teachers to please everybody!

Analyzing student information fabricated us consider our teachers. To understand their experience, we designed a survey that gave us a amend appreciation for the tremendous efforts they have made to create a space where nosotros can continue to connect with each other and build a stiff community.

Nosotros began to understand the amazing and difficult chore they take of managing their ain families while teaching us and keeping u.s. engaged. With this new understanding, we initiated a "turn-your-photographic camera-on" campaign and encouraged our peers to plow on their video cameras during altitude learning at a detail day and fourth dimension to show our appreciation.

Across all the groups we surveyed, all agreed on this: We miss our in-person community almost.

We too learned that empathy and appreciation will be integral to how our customs moves forwards. As one pupil shared in a focus group, "We must be grateful for each other."  In item, we accept learned that, fifty-fifty during these difficult times, our teachers continue to be there for u.s. and are eager to hear our voices.

Principal Garcia invited us to share our findings with the entire staff during their weekly professional evolution meeting. In Zoom breakout rooms, we led discussions and answered teachers' many questions about the needs and concerns of our fellow students. It felt good to share the information we had found and to help our teachers encounter and learn from it as we had.

While it was nerve-wracking to talk to and so many adults, speaking on behalf of our peers was empowering and exciting.

Teachers were thankful for our efforts. One shared that learning from united states can help gear up the culture at the school and "permit ourselves exist human" during these times. Some other instructor said she learned she needs to give "our kids and ourselves grace."

This year has been far from platonic, but information technology has non been lost. Nosotros have learned and so much well-nigh ourselves and our school customs. We accept learned that our voices thing and that nosotros take the power to gather information, communicate it and brand things better — for united states and the entire school. These are lessons that volition stay with us for life.

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Gustavo Aguilar, Alex Alejo, Guadalupe Laureano Carranza, Jamie-Lynn Juco, Nareli Juquilita Lopez and Adriana Rios-Cruz are students in grades nine through 12 at the UCLA Community School, a K-12 public school co-located on the campus of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles. Students of color comprise 99% of the student population.

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