NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Jessica Forgette’s ninth-grade accelerated English class is built on communication.

“What are some things that you guys would really like to see in our English class,” she asked her students on their second day of school, an exercise that let them collaborate and make the class rules together. It’s a method of teaching that has been lost in the restrictions of COVID-19 for the last two years, as students socially distanced, wore masks or even learned virtually from home.

What You Need To Know

  • Teachers are entering their first year without COVID restrictions since 2020

  • One high school teacher in Niagara Falls said the past two years have been defeating

  • Now she said she is hopeful for an uneventful year

“I feel like the past two years it was the constant unknown. Like, how is this year going to go? I felt like I was walking on eggshells. I feel like this year, I got it. I’m going back to normal,” she said.

And normal it was, with students sitting side by side with friends, movement during activities and smiling faces.

“I would really like to just have a normal school year," Forgette said. "I would even say an uneventful, nice, normal school year.”

Niagara Falls City School District Superintendent Mark Laurrie said the district is ready to retreat to COVID-19 protocols again if necessary, and the practices have become a tool.