Pandemic Shifts in Education That Should Be Permanent
All educators and students have been faced with disruption to their routines. All schools have gone through the ringer with COVID protocols, causing major changes to schedules, plans, calendars, staffing, and regulations. The following are several changes that could be permanent and may change the game in so many more ways than we initially thought possible.
Virtual or Independent instruction as a viable outlet for learning is now possible.
Independent study schools were separate from comprehensive high schools, no matter what anyone tried to do to incorporate the two. Independent study just wasn’t recognized as classical education, was way too outside of the box for most to consider as effective. Schools get paid based on “Average Daily Attendance” in California, so independent study programs had to accumulate ADA via completion of curriculum, and required many differences in what was taught, how it was supported, and when it could be covered or assessed.
Yesterday I wrote about how breaking large comprehensive high schools down into smaller ones laid the foundation for reform in NYC education at the high school level. Pre-pandemic we only considered virtual learning as independent learning. Independent learning wasn’t considered traditional, and never embraced until charter schools figured out how to do this effectively and began to fill enrollment with students who truly needed the independence.
Now, we all have multiple virtual backgrounds that make us laugh stored somewhere in a file on our desktop. Although we are zoomed out, we now know we can use this as a means for educating students, regardless of the times. Schools that are smart will embrace this, and add it as a part of their offerings, knowing that some students really flourish in a virtual setting.
Small Cohorts should remain, because if we learned one thing, it was that smaller, was much more manageable.
I have seen large comprehensive schools in the smoothest of settings still not outperform small schools because of the time it takes to do anything. Smaller transportation needs, school food needs, and staff sizes make adapting to changes, which are constantly and/or annually cycling into the year, completed with haste or even outright possible in some cases.
When everything turned upside down last March, I was able to flip my school in 3 days to virtual instruction. A surrounding school district nearby took 1 month off completely, then another month to roll out virtual learning plans, train staff, and prepare all of the plans necessary.
Making changes to keep up with the times in a large comprehensive setting or district with multiple schools that all require unique plans, yet fall under an umbrella of one large district plan is a major problem in education. You won’t see that change either, too many people would lose their jobs. It’s where the business of education crosses into the education of education — and perturbs it completely.
Social & Emotional Wellness must remain as a part of our school day, week, or monthly calendar.
Our school made every Wednesday into Social & Emotional Wellness check in day in the mornings, and it resounded with opportunities to intervene when necessary, identify problems or concerns before they happened or progressed into something greater, and fostered communication between the school and homes that made us stronger. Forgetting that, and eliminating S.E.W. from our offerings regularly, forgets that students have problems — and we know this is not true at all.
How can you continue to keep this offering as a part of your day? How can you utilize the fact that guidance counselors specialize in assisting students holistically, not just for schedules or to speak to kids as an outlet for behavior management — and make it a regular part of the school day? The value from having this outlet was tremendously important during COVID, and will be more so in the first few years when transitioning back — mark my words.
1:1 ratio of devices to students should never go away.
In 2021, after a damn pandemic that caused us to rely on technology to get us through — you mean to tell me that a school might take away devices from a student because it’s not needed everyday anymore? Does it have to be used every day? No. Should it be? No. But can it be there in the event that it’s needed? TOTALLY! Is having a device per student fostering an engaging learning environment? When it’s used to scaffold instruction it is.
Let me ask you this, do you rent a car every time you need one or call an uber for your daily transportation needs — or do you buy/lease one? I know of a program that doesn’t need computers, and drives learning on so many levels called Organized Binder. However a device can still scaffold the learning process, and still engage learning — but it doesn’t have to be all that we use or even the major source for learning. Taking devices away from students will make it that much harder to get them back.
Does a teacher give back a white board or smart board when they’re not using it?
These changes are major and were gifted to us disguised by the pandemic. Now that we’re looking to transition to a post COVID world, I urge schools not to let the above slip away as these are crucial aspects to our successes during the worst times we’ve encountered — imagine how impactful they’d be if we had them at our disposal during regular times…
