12 minute read
Can We Leverage Covid as Schooling’s Reckoning?
Pete Hall
Pete Hall is a capacity-builder. A former teacher and school principal, Pete now serves in the professional-development world as the Executive Director of EducationHall, LLC (www. EducationHall.com) and President of Strive Success Solutions (www. StriveSS.com). He has authored 11 books and lives in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. You can reach him via email at PeteHall@EducationHall. com or follow him on Twitter at @EducationHall.
Educators bristle at politicians’ and media’s current hyperfocus on “learning loss” and the implication that this cadre of “Covid kids” is irreparably damaged. While the global pandemic’s effect is long-lasting and far-reaching in a lot of ways (to wit: half a million dead in a highly politicized environment causing economic and lifestyle shutdowns on the backdrop of significant racial tensions and equity issues), we know better than to harp on what’s “lost” when we’ve got a veritable bounty of information on our Zoom-exhausted laptops showing us a much brighter, much more optimistic view.
For decades—generations, even—we’ve lamented the shortcomings of the American education system (see A Nation at Risk, No Child Left Behind, and others for the scathing imperatives), so this perspective is not new. And now, on the eve of school reopenings as we prepare to welcome students back to the buildings, if we’re to listen to the cacophony of pontificating from those outside of education, we’d curse the virus and our inconsistent reactions to it, and we’d believe that there’s a monumental lack of learning because kids haven’t been able to attend the very schools that don’t do the job they’re purported to do in the first place.
Covid shutdowns and our collective quick-pivot to virtual/hybrid/distance learning have been a disruption. Disruptive forces tend to bring us back to our “mision”—a word I’ve coined that describes that enlightened intersection of our mission (why we do what we do) and our vision (the mental picture of what it looks like when we’re accomplishing our goals). Disruptions also embolden and activate the innovative, creative thinkers among us, enabling us to learn, to grow, to change, to adapt, and to reimagine whatever’s been disrupted.
So what’s been disrupted? Schooling. Not learning, not education. Schooling.
Is a disruption to schooling unwelcome? Absolutely not. Unless the intended purpose of schooling is to exacerbate our society’s inequitable structures by mass producing drone-like workers in a factory model that ranks children and sorts them into caste-like tiers based on race, income, and other factors, that is. If that’s our goal, our school systems have been remarkably—and lamentably—successful.
However, I’d like to believe our mision is more enlightened. Perhaps if we reframe our education system with a very clear, universally embraced goal it would help. Let’s try this: To raise, educate, and prepare young people to be valuable, contributing members of an ever-better, equitable, and peaceful global community. As a society, don’t we value the inherent wonder of human beings? Don’t we want responsible, civic-oriented neighbors? Are we, as parents, more interested in raising healthy, happy, virtuous children than widgets with high test scores? I’d like to think so.
In order to accomplish this lofty and reasonable goal, our schooling system needs a fundamental disruption. A hard reset. With it, let’s embolden and activate those innovative, creative thinkers—most of them educators, coincidentally. If we take advantage of this moment, in what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we can maximize learning and education…by rethinking schooling.
Now, it’s likely that we’ll fall back on our same-old, same-old practices in the kneejerk reaction to get back to “normal” as quickly as possible, in some ill-advised attempt to believe the worst is behind us and we can return to the way things were. It’ll make us feel better, slipping back into the ruts of our pre-pandemic warehouse of schooling practices and routines. However, that mirage is fleeting, and it’ll send us back into the jagged embrace of the “learning loss” rhetoric.
Fortunately, over the course of the past year-plus, I’ve had the great fortune to meet (over Zoom, mostly, on an exhausted laptop) and talk with thousands of educators. Some of the most innovative and creative have forged ahead with education and learning, even with (and often because of) the disruption of schooling. I’m hopeful that some of their ideas will help us reimagine how we move forward from this tipping point. Dare I suggest that we may have possibly found ways to become better educators and provide a more impactful learning experience due to the pandemic? Here’s a short list that might offer some guidance as universally-applied best practices:
At the classroom level:
If we truly believe in supporting the growth and learning of all our students, seeing them as young people in our community, then we must prioritize the social-emotional wellbeing of each and every child. Our families have experienced a whole array of trauma over the past year and a half, and first and foremost, students need to feel safe when they come to school.
“There are many ways to create that sense of security,” says first-grade teacher Analisa McCann of Spokane Valley, Washington. “In addition to normalizing discussions of emotions in my classroom, I’ve built in some options for students to self-regulate when they’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or upset. I have a break spot in my classroom that students can access, and we’ve also compiled individual break boxes that include regulation tools—a timer, stress ball, piece of felt, and other tangible items. I sent them home with students when the school year started so they’ve got a kit at home, too. The students can self-select when they need to utilize these tools in order to help them get back on track.”
Helping students regulate their emotions and activate the “learning” part of their brains seems like, well, a no-brainer. Sometimes students need their teacher to help. “I make sure that I welcome every student at the door every day,” continues Analisa. “I connect with them throughout the class, and it’s not always about academics. My students are children, and they often need that human interaction.”
“Relationships are the cornerstone of learning,” agrees teacher Adrian Bolado of Point Isabel, Texas. “As teachers, we must show an abundance of empathy for our colleagues, parents, staff, and especially our students.” We needn’t know exactly what’s stressing our students or what trauma they’re experiencing to support them through tough times, either. If students are struggling, we don’t need to know why they’re struggling, we simply need to attune—or understand their emotions and honor that reality—in order to create a safe environment for them to thrive.
One of the key environmental shifts we can make is to ramp up our flexibility. How do we do this? Offering student choice in assignments, arranging fluidity in deadlines, and utilizing a variety of assessment techniques to give our students ample opportunity to grow, develop, and demonstrate their learning. “Flexibility with pretty much anything dealing with education is essential right now,” says Adrian. “Rigid, all-or-nothing, inside-the-box structures will alienate a huge portion of our students. Bringing a flexible, personalized approach can only benefit them now and for the foreseeable future.”
At the building level:
Teaching social-emotional skills and selfregulation approaches are essential, no matter what structures, policies, curriculum, or schedules our schooling takes. Sara Holm, a teacher in Incline Village, Nevada, works in a school that has employed what school officials refer to as a “rolling start.” As students arrive on campus, even after the opening bell, they gather on the campus grounds for exercise and some natural play.
“Rather than dive right into rigorous academic work, we start with a little recess,” Sara says. “Combining a bit of physical activity with some light socializing and a dose of vitamin D has created all sorts of positive results. In fact, it’s been magical!” After some time in the fresh air, students enter the building and engage in a Morning Meeting—a time for exchanging observations, thoughts, feelings, and stories—before digging into academic work.
And what about the call for rigorous bell-to-bell instruction, you ask? “We value our instructional minutes,” Sara responds. “In fact, we value them so much that we’re willing to allocate time to help our students prepare for learning, to do the things brain science has taught us about how students learn, before forcing them into it.” Intuitively, we believe the best path to learning includes non-stop teaching and learning activities. As Sara’s school has exposed, learning increases when students are ready to learn.
Teachers, also, must be ready to teach, according to school principal Ericka Hursey of Richland, South Carolina. “We’ve begun prioritizing authentic self-care,” she says. And for those of you whose experiences with self-care include trips to the spa, taking a day off, or eating away your stress, that’s not what she’s referencing. “Authentic self-care means I’m actually taking care of myself on a regular basis,” Ericka shares. “I’m now back to working out at least three days per week and eating better. I intentionally leave my work computer at school, and I’ve scheduled a ‘get going’ time so I reduce the number of hours I’m physically present in the building.”
What are the results? “By taking care of myself, I can take better care of my staff,” continues Ericka. “Through my modeling and explicit direction, they can do the same for themselves, and it all trickles down to benefit our students.” Gone are the days where we revere the first-to-arrive, last-to-leave crowd. Long hours, it turns out, rarely equate to improved performance and top-notch results.
“We want healthy, stable human beings in our schools,” Ericka says. “It doesn’t help anyone to have over-worked, stressed, frantic adults working here. By becoming more strategic with our time, we can achieve a better sense of balance, and we can be more in-themoment with our students and our families.”
At the district level:
You might think that a standards-based focus has taken a back seat during this pandemic. Au contraire! Raising and nurturing well-rounded, self-regulated, curious, engaged, and academically charged students who reliably master key academic benchmarks requires more than simply allocating more time-on-task. As you’ve read already, it requires us to tap into the human element. Connections. Relationships. And, not surprisingly, a willingness to personalize the learning experience.
This leads us to a couple of strategies that districts are utilizing with great success. “If we’re going to expect teachers to offer personalized learning, we’ve got to do the same with our professional development,” says Mimi Guzman, a curriculum specialist in Point Isabel, Texas. “We used to lump all our PD together and expect every teacher to learn the same things on the same pace as everyone else. With the advent of technology, a series of staff surveys, and targeted needs assessments, we now offer a PD schedule that matches staff with their level of mastery.”
No more one-size-fits-all? According to Mimi, “The cookie-cutter approach is gone. The content, the depth, the pace, the method of delivery, the technology, and the coaching we offer now takes into account the different goals teachers have set, the different needs teachers have, the different ways they learn, and the different support they’ll need along the way. And because PD is such an integral part of a school district, we must individualize it in order to get the biggest bang for the buck.”
All the changes referenced so far—in daily routines, social-emotional check-ins, self-care, and personalized PD—require one consistent element: relationships. And in order to alter the trajectory of our young people on a grander scale, Tammy Campbell, a superintendent in Federal Way, Washington, has fostered relationships throughout the community in order to make informed, strategic decisions. “At the beginning of the pandemic when we first went to online instruction, it wasn’t working too well,” she admits. “And we know that because we surveyed our scholars and families several times throughout the year to get their input.”
In addition, open forums, scholar advisory groups, and other structures set the tone that stakeholder input isn’t just requested, it’s listened to and acted upon. “This is how we know what’s working and what’s not,” Tammy says. “And this 360 degree feedback is a critical piece of our assessment and planning puzzle. Because you can’t have 20/20 vision in the midst of a oncein-a-lifetime pandemic, it helps to collect information from as many sources as possible to guide our planning.”
A final word
The unfortunate and irresponsible promotion of “learning loss” messaging has obscured a couple of disarming realities of our school systems. First, it’s that teaching is hard, complex, and demanding work, far outweighing the rigors that most education licensing programs would have us believe, and well more grueling and arduous than you might read while you’re doomscrolling online. And second, it’s that our schooling practices and policies reflect the inherently inequitable structures of our society writ large.
Of the thousands of educators I’ve been honored to work with, learn from, talk to, and read about over the past 18 months or so, I don’t recall a single one who hasn’t felt overwhelmed by the workload, exhausted by the requirements, exasperated by the structural limitations, and disturbed by the embedded racial, cultural, and communitybased inequities entrenched in systems across the country. Unfortunately, each has also felt rather alone in the charge to enact change.
So, while I’ve outlined some steps we can take at the classroom, schoolhouse, and district level to revamp our schooling practices to benefit all our students, in order for us to truly benefit and grow from the pandemic’s disruption of our school systems, we cannot force our teachers to fight these battles on their own. Addressing issues of race and equity need to be part of a larger, community-centered series of conversations and decisions. Districts must work with urgency and purpose to confront the inequitable access to resources, materials, technology, and support. Systems must work in concert to build networks of services, connections, opportunity, and assistance in order to overhaul centuries of harm. This is work we can do, and we must.
Let’s not lament what we lost or get dragged into the doomsayers’ messaging. Let’s learn. Let’s adapt. And let’s eschew the status quo, low expectations, the raciallyimbalanced structures, and ineffective practices for a couple of enduring, equitable, and educationally sound approaches. We might not get another chance at a hard reset in this lifetime. If not now, when?
