Much Ado about Return to Learn

We are officially 10 months into a global pandemic that has been a major disruption to life as we knew it. Businesses, entertainment venues, restaurants, retail, gyms and more have all had to alter the way we do business and live our day to day lives, but at the center of everything is Education. This isn’t my educator ego talking either. Quality public education is a major component on the successful return to a more normal pre-pandemic existence. The pressure is on for public educators across the country.

Let me just start by saying the pre-pandemic, public education has become a MAJOR social safety net for kids and families. Again, this isn’t my over inflated educator ego talking here….let’s look at the facts:

• Many students receive 2/3 of their weekly meals in school based cafeterias. Many families are reliant on free and reduced priced meals to insure their children are meeting their recommended USDA nutritional recommendations.
• Many families are able to have employment outside of the home knowing their children are in a safe environment, free of cost for up to 8 hours a day when transportation and bussing times are factored in.
• Schools provide social/emotional growth opportunities necessary for child development. Skills like collaboration, cooperation, turn taking, and general rule following are more consistently applied in school settings.
• Mental health and emotional support services are part of daily and weekly offerings in many schools. When we close our school house doors, many children do not have access to these services.
• Medical and dental screenings take place in the school setting. Many schools have partnerships with the health departments, and health care providers so things like routine dental exams, and preventative care can be provided in the schools along with vision and hearing screenings.
• Access to services outside the school including medical, social emotional and family supports often are initiated in the school setting after teachers have voiced concerns. Often time schools make referrals to partner agencies to insure family needs ranging from health care services, food distribution, and even housing needs are met.
• McKinney-Vento laws rely on public education to screen for homelessness and transiency. With our current economic situation- an increasing number of families will find themselves eligible for services under the McKinney-Vento act, but with lack of face to face participation in education, these families may remain unidentified.
• Many students who have High ACES scores who rely on their time in the classroom and at school as part of their safety and security and as part of ‘reducing their dose’ are missing out on opportunities to heal from their trauma.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have lamented the fact that I am not seeing my kiddos face to face on a daily basis. At the onset, we had a lot of unknowns we were dealing with and the lesser of the evils (between virtual education and the risk of passing on a virus we knew little about), Virtual education was definitely the lesser. I was worried for my students, I was worried for my staff. I was not as worried about myself. Through this time, we have seen wide variance in how schools and districts approach these concerns. Some schools have continued to offer 5 days of face to face instruction, while others have been virtual for ten months, and most are somewhere in between.

Over the course of the 10 months we have been in a state of pandemic, including the last trimester of the last school year, and looking into the first two trimesters of the current school year, we have been either virtual or offering a hybrid approach to teaching our students. The problems associated with both options are common across the country. Virtual education presents huge equity issues: who has access to technology, the internet, and an adult at home to provide guidance and support as well as a teacher who is capable of teaching effectively in a virtual classroom. Student success is reliant on all four factors being in place. Hybrid models where students attend school face to face part time and operate on a flipped classroom model with virtual tasks a couple days a week, while maybe more equitable in that all kids have the opportunity for intervention and quality instruction on their in person learning days, presents the exact same issues on the virtual days that the virtual education model presents.

For teachers, the demands have only increased. Many teachers experienced steep learning curves as they learned to navigate online learning platforms like Google Classroom and Seesaw, but also had to learn Screencastify, Loom, Flipgrid, Kahoot, Kami, and others to insure that parent communication is effective, that students are able to collaborate and interact, that learning content can be delivered effectively and efficiently, that students are engaged and focused, and that they are able to assess, provide feedback and report learning outcomes. Teachers all had a major paradigm shift in how to be an effective educator. Teaching is a hard job. Throw major changes in the design and delivery of instruction into the middle of a career of a teacher and they will rise to the occasion, but not with out having a huge impact on their time, energy and mental health.

And now that we have this virtual education piece somewhat ‘down’, we are looking at returning to learn in a face to face format. Federal and state governments want to get kids back in school so they can get the economy back on track. Major funding bills to support public education have been drafted and revised and will hopefully become a lasting reality for our public schools, who have been long underfunded. It would be my hope that through this time, the value of public education would be commonly recognized and that recognition would lead to adequate funding. As we say in the school improvement world….Hope isn’t a strategy. Anyhow…

As we look at welcoming our students back full time There are many factors to consider. How will we continue to engage in all of the CDC recommended mitigation strategies that we have successfully implemented with the building at half capacity when we go back to full capacity? How do we ensure that sick and exposed kids stay home?

I know, in my building we will be doing everything we can to ensure the safest environment we can provide for face to face learning. We will continue sanitizing people and spaces and masking up. We will do our best to social distance in the classrooms, hallways and cafeteria. The majority of the adults in my building will have had both rounds of the vaccination prior to seeing larger groups of students. We have a plan in place to assess students and provide the intervention and enrichment opportunities they need.

We have all seen the Facebook meme about not worrying about kids falling behind because they are surviving a pandemic. True enough and it sounds great on Facebook. But the reality is…. once again…. schools will have to prove they did their jobs during this time. We will be responsible for providing data and reporting on student growth. We have to prove it to our communities, the legislators who make laws and approve funding that teachers were actually teaching during the last 10 months.

In addition to assessing and intervening for the kids who struggled with virtual education, we also have to work hard to connect more families to resources that are in high demand, work with kids who may not have had their social/emotional needs met during this time, support kids whose trauma filled backgrounds we no less trauma filled during this time, provide opportunities for the students who thrived during this time, and continue to provide opportunities for kids who opt out of face to face instruction and continue with virtual formats.

Once again, educators have their work cut out for us. Teaching during a pandemic has been a huge challenge, but teaching post pandemic might be a bigger one!