Crossroads

During the past five weeks of being homebound, I’ve had ample opportunity to consider the future of school once the pandemic is over. I’ve written about this in my last post, and I’d like to write now about the evolution of my thinking as it relates to what’s next for education. I have two lenses for this - as a veteran high school educator of 27 years and as an educational designer, which has been my passion for the past 7 years.

As we all know, it’s going to be interesting when school reopens - yes, an understatement. There will be considerations of social distancing in schools, new schedules, changes to standardized testing, changes to the use of technology and too many things to list here. Everything will be open for discussion and for change.

Or will it be?

If this experience has taught us anything, it is the remarkable value of the human experience that school affords. There is no substitute for the daily interactions between kids that want to learn and the people that show up every day to help them do so. And while the classroom, and the school experience has been criticized for years, there is no doubt that many people have learned of the fundamental value of the timeless connection between teacher and student.

The need for this relationship, and the challenges that have emerged as a result of a sterile and ineffective virtual experience, suggests a potential double-down on the face-to-face experience. It will be tempting to return to the safety and comfort of the known school experience. But August will be here quickly and getting school up and running in a new reality will undoubtably require shifts to the pre-pandemic model of education. That will be the focus and most likely consume the energy and efforts of the entire school system. But beyond that, and what happens after and over the course of the next school year, will have implications for decades.

Every school will approach what is next in their own unique way. But I think there are some patterns that have already emerged about a plausible set of futures which make sense. I am not the first to write about this; see the work of Greg Bamford, David Culberhouse as well as Transcend to get additional perspectives about potential change models.

Here is what I think:

1). There will be a need to reestablish the safety and security of the physical experience of school. As I wrote previously, this makes sense and is reasonable. This is a likely the next step for all schools and will manifest by adjustments to the physical campus and experience to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff. The experience of school will be different but my guess is that any changes that occur will apply within the traditional context of what school has always been. The school experience will be able to be recognized as the school experience, with some slight changes (social distancing, change in schedules, etc.). If there is an effort towards incremental improvement, my guess is that it will target preparation for another interruption. For instance, schools may seek to develop a broader pedagogy that enables more effective virtual learning. It remains to be seen how much impact, if any, these improvements will have on the daily school experience.

2). The next step will be to develop a resilience plan that enables the school to effectively meet system-wide interruptions at scale. This will include adjustments and improvements to the school’s technology infrastructure, addressing equity issues associated with home Internet access, engagement methodologies for teaching in virtual spaces, rethinking assessment strategies, and developing approaches for the social and emotional support of teachers, students, and administrators. This will be captured in a “remote learning” plan that can be activated in response to any interruption, from a snow day to a more significant event.

At this point, it’s school as school, but with the adjustments that are required to reduce the impact of the pandemic. In addition, there is the growth and improvement that is required to meet whatever the next stoppage might look like.

So, do you think schools will stop there? Realistically, school is back up and running, it’s safe, and there is a plan for the next time. If you are educator in a school, are you willing to stop there? After all, and in fairness to schools, what I just described in 1 and 2 is a pretty big challenge.

But beyond this big challenge is incredible opportunity. There is one more option to consider.

3) Rethink everything. This requires moving beyond reestablishing 2019 and just making shifts in traditional practice to prepare for the next interruption. It means developing a plan for creating an entirely new iteration of school and the experience that is provided. It means discarding the artificial and divisive construct of “remote learning” and accepting that it’s just learning and that learning can occur across a variety of venues, at any point of time. And here’s something to really consider - a new iteration of school means that the need for and the scope of a resilience plan changes because a new iteration of school would most certainly be designed to be responsive and adaptive - and therefore resilient - and capable of minimizing the educational impact of an event like we are experiencing now.

Of course, this would require the advancement of new ways of thinking about curriculum, assessment, instruction, technology, professional development…and the list goes on. Obviously, doing all of this would require a herculean effort.

A focus on the future - what’s required as a first step?

Within each school’s community, at this moment, there exists a wealth of information about education and schools that is waiting to be uncovered. Capturing and understanding this information will be essential for understanding the need, scope, and direction of change efforts. Will schools take the time to ask and understand the perspectives of students, parents, teachers, admins and other community members that have developed during the pandemic? Will schools have the time to do this as the difficult job of getting school up and running continues? Will the opportunity to capture this information fade, only to be eventually forgotten?

I understand the pressures on teachers and administrators. They’ve got unknown conditions ahead and there is the very real need to establish a sense or normalcy for every kid, teacher and administrator because they need it. So does the school community. The immediate challenge to schools is to make sense of all of this, something that is an extremely difficult proposition when you have the day-to-day challenges of running a school or teaching a bunch of kids.

But, at the same time…this is once in a lifetime opportunity to re-craft the meaning and experience of school.

You should take it.