COVID and Maria's Experience

Maria's high school career has been shaped by COVID. She experienced remote schooling, mask requirements, and the disruption of normal social and academic life during her middle school years. The pandemic is testable on the Regents, and Maria has the unusual advantage of being a witness to it. She can speak with personal authority about how globalization made the pandemic possible (rapid international travel enabled spread) and how globalization also made the response possible (international scientific collaboration produced vaccines at unprecedented speed). The pandemic is also a powerful case for the enduring issue of how technology and global connections produce both opportunities and risks.