With the last couple of weeks involving a winter storm, power outages for some students, and asynchronous learning, many teachers on campus have been understanding of the circumstances in regards to their students’ well-being.

“As a teacher, one of my primary goals is to educate students on chemistry,” chemistry teacher Joann Leung said. “However, if a student’s mental well-being is compromised, it would be extremely difficult to learn. It’s important that students’ basic needs are met before they try to learn.”

For sophomore Tulsi Rampalli, it meant a lot that some of her teachers’ assignments were Google Forms ensuring that she and her family had been ok both physically and mentally.

“I think it was very kind of my teachers to check up on me the first day and not overload us with work because it had been a stressful couple of weeks for Texas in general. One of my teachers sent us a form asking if we had power, water, and if we’re in a good mental state, and if there was anything she could do to help us,” Rampalli said. “I feel like some adults aren’t really understanding of the mental health of teenagers and how stressed we already are on a day-to-day basis, so it was nice to see that they cared.”

Knowing there might be unexpected issues, Spanish teacher Ashli Taquino wanted to check in with her students.

“It was particularly important to touch base with students the last couple of weeks to see how everyone was doing and see if anyone was experiencing any problems or challenges,” Taquino said. “Since the effects of the weather were so widespread and varied, there was no way of knowing for sure how students and families were doing.”

The slowdown of assignments from a lot of teachers was convenient and relieved a lot of stress for sophomore Grant Carlisle.

“I feel like school already causes so much stress for me in general so getting kind of a break was really nice,” Carlisle said. “I personally didn’t lose power, but I knew a lot of people who were dealing with rolling power outages so I think it was just really considerate for teachers to check up on us and try to make our asynchronous work as painless as possible.”