Photo Credit: Folco Masi on Unsplash
Teachers are exhausted. After a year of constant struggle, we were all looking forward to a normal and boring year. We were hoping to take a breather. However, we are now facing continued covid-19 threats and challenges of how to best teach in the pandemic classroom. We cannot take a breather and just be complacent this year in hopes of a return to normal. Who knows what normal is anymore? No, educators must instead continue reflecting and assessing how we best addressed the needs of students during the pandemic.
What was our experience like in virtual school? What experiences and skills did we miss from not being in-person? What are the true benefits of in-person school? What creations and innovations should we keep?
We all should realize now that education must transform. An entire generation has missed a year of traditional school. Is this such a bad thing? I wonder. As educators, we know these students will never “catch up”. The linear model we utilize does not allow for gaps in process. Maybe if we reframe our conversation, this moment could be the opportunity we are all searching for to reimagine education.
What could education be? Have you permitted yourself to dream? Do you allow yourself to leave the constraints of your structured schedule and small classroom to consider what could be? If not, you should. If educators do not take the reins now, we will be lost in a system designed and created by those who have no idea what education is.
Consider the pandemic. Who made the decisions about how you should teach in the classroom? Were those people educators? As we move forward to recover, many “experts” and tech people will dive into the arena to offer products and solutions for our educational system woes. Few of them will be educators or have any experience in the classroom.
Many of these “products” will be a one size fits all solution as companies hope entire districts will purchase their answer to a new era. One size fits all, however, is an answer that we already know will not succeed. This type of solution is too similar to our current factory model. If we give each student the same “product”, we will have high quality students. Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for the past 100 years? Standardize education. No, we now to need to move towards individualizing education. Companies cannot provide that product. Rather, we as educators need to create the systems and products that can accomplish that goal.
I already hear your excuses. Education is a large ship that cannot be turned toward a new direction very easily. Yet, what did we do at a moment’s notice in March 2020? We pivoted and used a radical new approach. Change starts in one classroom. Momentum and excitement build with experimentation. Ideas spread change. One educator’s ideas and experiments can have a powerful impact on an institution.
Education can turn on a dime; the pandemic has proven this fact. We do not need to wait for the giant bureaucracy to shift our mindsets. We can take action now to transform our future. If we all take small steps, we are making giant leaps forward.