The hidden academic costs of concussions

I didn't think I hit my head very hard.

It was just a soccer game — a shot on goal, the ball hit my head. So what? Players get hit in the head all the time.

At least that's what I thought.

But the next day in class, in the fall of 2024 at Syosset High School, everything felt wrong. The lights were too bright, the room was too loud, and my vision was blurred. I couldn't follow what was happening, and the pressure in my head kept building.

I wasn't on the field anymore. I was in a classroom, and I couldn't function.

While most conversations about concussions focus on when athletes can return to play, far less attention is given to what happens when a student goes back to school. Schools have developed clear return-to-play protocols, but academic recovery is far less structured, leaving students to manage symptoms in environments that can actively make them worse.

A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury that disrupts normal brain function, with symptoms like headaches, dizziness and light sensitivity. The discussion around them usually revolves around sports, including athlete safety and timelines.

But for students, the most significant consequences of concussions often occur far from the field. They're academic ones, and they happen in the classroom.

Educationally, concussions carry a hidden cost: They temporarily reduce a student's ability to think and learn.

After an injury, cognitive tasks that normally require minimal effort — reading, concentrating, solving problems — can become significantly more demanding if it's suddenly hard to focus, or you're cognitively fatigued. Studies published in the Journal of Neurotrauma and other neuroscience journals have found that adolescents recovering from concussion often experience reduced processing speed, attention capacity and working memory. This creates a major learning challenge, as school environments are built around sustained cognitive effort. Various classroom activities we take for granted can strain a recovering brain.

Another hidden cost of concussion recovery is the missed academic work that piles up.

When students return after missing days or even weeks of school, they often face multiple assignments, tests and deadlines waiting for them. In many Long Island schools, academic accommodations after concussions can vary widely, often depending on individual teachers rather than a structured, consistent system. Without structured accommodations, this backlog creates significant stress during a period when cognitive capacity is already lower, and managing the workload can quickly become overwhelming.

There is a clear gap in how schools approach concussion recovery, with return-to-learn systems often inconsistent, loosely defined — or absent altogether. More consistent policies, such as reduced workloads, extended deadlines and coordinated academic planning, could help students recover without tainting their long-term academic success.

Concussions are not a small-scale problem. About 2.8 million children and adolescents experience traumatic brain injuries each year in this country, many of them during sports and recreational activities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Schools have built extensive systems to protect athletes from returning to play too early. Now they need equally strong systems to protect students when they return to learning, and to align academic goals with the realities of brain recovery.

The concussion on the field is just the first impact. For many, including myself, the truly confounding challenge begins when walking back into the classroom.

This guest essay reflects the views of Chloe Reyhani, of Woodbury, a junior at Syosset High School.