On March 13, 2020, our schools shut down. On March 19, 2020, California went on statewide lockdown. It started with two weeks of spring break and became 10 months of isolation.

Ilaria Zaccone (9) found out from her mom that lockdown had started. She was in her fifth grade class and was told that her break would last two weeks.

“They just sent us home with like a giant packet of work to do over, like, a two week break or whatever,” Zaccone said. “And then my mom tells me ‘Oh, yeah, well, we’re on lockdown now, like, you’re not going back to school anytime soon.’”

COVID changed daily life for Zaccone. The days got long and boring, she couldn’t see her friends, and the germs started becoming more and more apparent.

“I feel like during COVID, I got a lot more careful about germs and stuff,” Zaccone said. “And so that, like, changed how I went to school and how long I wore my mask for and, like, I would always wash my hands and stuff before eating … I don’t think that would have happened and it probably wouldn’t have happened to other people as well if COVID wasn’t [or] didn’t happen to us.”

Audrey Behan (9) found out in the middle of her fifth grade class right after she got back from her field trip to Catalina Island Marine Institute. For her, lockdown became ‘cleaning season’ and an opportunity to do new things.

“Pretty much my family … kind of dedicated that time to doing things around the house that we probably wouldn’t have done before … like [we] planted a garden, and we did a lot of chalk art, and my dad sort of taught my sister to throw a football,” Behan said.

Evelyn Yang (9) also found out from their mom, but unlike others, they didn’t mind online school and sitting around, they just got their work done and not much else.

“I got a whole lot lazier,” Yang said. “Because I spent all day at the same seat on the same computer for hours at a time because that’s what I did for school. And so occasionally I would go around, jump around.”

Yang also shared that it felt weird coming back to school, and returning to public in general.

“I remember when I first got back [to public spaces] everything felt wrong,” Yang said. “Like having my face out without a mask or with a mask. It felt weird to be in public. Like it felt weird doing things in public. It wasn’t right. It felt very scary.”

Adele Wrench (10) first heard it on the radio, she remembers that a few days before, she had to start packing for a field trip, but that was one of the last things she did before everything shut down.

“I went skiing briefly … like a week before,” Wrench said. “But I was getting ready to go on my CIMI trip because I was in sixth grade … we were about to start packing and like getting ready to go on the trip. Then that wasn’t happening.”

Wrench also felt strange coming back into the “normal,” where people were going back to school, taking their masks off and being around each other again; she had gotten used to staying in and being separate from everyone else.

“When … people [stopped] wearing masks and stuff [it] definitely, like, caused a lot of anxiety,” Wrench said. “Like, when people were getting sick, and, like, they weren’t caring that they’d be getting other people sick … That was a little stressful and it kind of was annoying. It made me a little angry, but … I’ve accepted it and it’s okay now.”