The Pandemic & Education

We can all agree that times are not like they have ever been within any of our life spans (at least for those of us under 100). What has been debated passionately is how we, as educators & school systems, should best work with this ongoing pandemic. Some schools have responded by going online to synchronous classes while others have decided to use asynchronous learning and still others have decided that they don't know enough about access and an expectation for online learning is not equitable so they sadly have their students doing nothing.

You can go on any social media and see countless hot takes complaining about what not to do and exaggerating these scenarios. Parents are either dismayed by the huge amount of worksheets sent home and apps to download or saddened by the amount of time their kids now have with nothing to do from school. On the educator side "Students shouldn't be looking at Zoom for 8 hours a day" is one of my favorite disconnected complaints. Between recess, breaks and lunch students aren't in the classroom for 8 hours in a day so why are you even entertaining the idea they'd be on Zoom for this long? These are the types of responses from people who don't understand the actual day to day. How can I return all of the week's corrected worksheets to families on Fridays online? This is the frantic response from a teacher who is photocopying 500 pages of worksheets for each student prior to the last day of school in person.

There is now singular thing we can do that will solve everything. The response that is missing is the one that is a measured and thoughtful question about how our students should be learning; one that starts with questioning what is genuine learning. There once was no internet and guess what... learning occurred! There once was no paper so sadly worksheets couldn't printed but, how could learning occur without worksheets?!? How can we engage students in an equitable manner so that they develop the skills and background knowledge to effect change in the world?

So much focus has turned to online learning when we should be thinking about how we can guide students through inquiry-based learning at home. If we are in a situation where all of our students have high-speed internet and we provide them with devices that doesn't mean all of the learning should be on these devices. We have to find meaningful ways to make the time together online valuable, but recognize that seeing faces and hearing a teacher talk isn't genuine learning.

How can we help students generate interest? Once they're asking questions we know we're on the right track. Project-based learning, phenomena-based learning, inquiry, cross-curricular projects, hands-on work, student voice/choice... All of these can make for learning experiences moving forward that can deeply benefit all of us from teachers to students to families. Providing digital skills like screen recording & video editing can be a step in the right direction for those who have access to devices and the web.  Flipping the classroom and making your offline time an asynchronous video of the "lecture" in a dynamic, interactive format can help this process as well. Any one of these alone does not forge a dynamic learning experience for our students.

I'd love to hear more ways in which we can positively impact our approach to education and less complaints about fictional scenarios or things that teachers feel is beyond their ability. It is time to take a deep breath and re-envision how we view education and how we can partner with families in productive, relevant and meaningful ways to help our students learn.