There aren’t many places you’d be able to find a pair of cleats, notebooks and a disco ball crammed together. After a bit of thought, lockers are believably the first place most people would consider.

The reintroduction of lockers this school year followed many previous COVID-19 restrictions. Ms. Marianne Simmons, upper school coordinator and administrative assistant, recalled that “we had to do away, obviously, with the lockers … immediately when [COVID] was announced in March 2020.”

Students were forced to restructure their routines after the swift switch to online school, and again as St. George’s transitioned to hybrid learning before returning to in-person classes this past year.

Ms. Simmons shared that “Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. McClain decided that [a] return to normalcy was due” after the uncertainty and rapid changes throughout the last two years.

Before the pandemic, every student was assigned a locker, and many joined in the tradition of decorating it.
“Your first time in middle school, first time having a locker is all super exciting,” remembered junior Gracye Thompson. “In sixth grade, I definitely… [put up] cute decorations.”

Fellow junior Julia Giolo shared the same experience; her group of friends “all put [up] decorations.”
However, now that the option for lockers has returned, Giolo explained that she didn’t ask for a locker this year because of the stress it added to the school day.

“There’s just not enough time between classes for me to stop at my locker … I always remember it being stressful,” said Giolo. “The time it would take for me to go to my locker and back, it just wouldn’t work.”

This stress and lack of time made her realize having a locker wasn’t worth it.

Giolo said “we stopped using [lockers] during covid, and then I guess I just… didn’t rely on [them] anymore.”

This major decline in the use of lockers poses the possibility of losing a popular staple of many people’s high school experiences.

“When I think of high school, I think of lockers,” said senior Juliana Carpenter, a locker user. Carpenter considers lockers a staple of high school, explaining, “I feel like in media we often see high schools being presented with lockers and long halls full of lockers on both sides.”

Other students share the same opinion; “You think of lockers in high school and stuff, it just goes together,” agreed Giolo.