Schools Can't Go Back to Normal
COVID upended education, but in too many schools it looks like it's 2019
It's hard to believe it's been four years since COVID-19 shut everything down. There are residual signs of the pandemic out in the world. I still see placards telling people to wear masks, distance six feet apart, and wash their hands. But for the most part, COVID has been erased from public life. I see a small minority of people wearing masks on the subway or other public spaces. Discussions of infection rates or mitigation efforts have been forced to the margins. Even in leftist organizing spaces, they are uncommon.
And yet, like the signs I still see around the city, COVID has left an indelible mark. This is particularly true in schools. In the middle of the third "normal" year after COVID, students and educators are continuing to struggle. However, despite this reality, the prevailing response is to ignore the impact of COVID.
This year, I am working with teachers in three different states, and I continue to follow education news online. Across these different communities, the conversation is practically identical. Kids are struggling. Sixth graders today are more likely to have trouble reading and enumerating at grade level than four years ago. But the more significant concern is young people's mental well-being. Teachers I work with feel completely overwhelmed because their students seem more impulsive, defiant, and angry than anything teachers have seen before. When I talk to teachers about this behavior, I'm sympathetic but not surprised. Overall, the schools I'm working in have hardly adjusted their approach to teaching and learning in comparison to pre-COVID.
To be fair, in New York City, students are being screened for mental health. There is also a larger emphasis on social emotional learning than pre-COVID. As a result schools are also getting more supports. This is promising, but tragically inadequate. Because the fundamental nature of schooling in New York City feels indistinguishable from 2019.
In four middle schools I'm supporting this year, it's test prep season, the time of year when teaching, learning, and school culture are consumed by a focus on reading short passages and answering multiple-choice and short-answer questions. I'm watching schools spend entire days on practice tests or "test simulations" when the actual state exam is just days away. I am trying to figure out what schools hope to learn from these simulations about students' performance at this point that they can address in eight school days. It's maddening to watch. It feels like watching someone try to jet ski in the middle of a dried-up lake, oblivious to why they're going nowhere.
It's no secret that conventional approaches to schooling were failing far too many kids prior to COVID. So why are we returning to the same strategies when the needs have only increased? First of all, we have to acknowledge that students' overall relationship to schooling has changed as a result of COVID. Prior to COVID, going to school was just a fact of life. Students may have hated school, but they were going no matter what. Then, one day in March, everything changed. School went online, and students were freed. Some students weren't able to get online. Some students didn't have supervision to ensure they logged on. Other students logged on but didn't participate in lessons or classwork. Others logged on and did the work but still realized that school as they knew it was over. For all of these students across these categories, life went on.
When schools reopened, students came back to the building, but we lost many of them mentally. They tasted between five and 17 months of liberty. They could play on their iPads or PS5s for days on end and turn in little or no work with minimal consequences. I don't mean to sound curmudgeonly here because I think these kids are doing exactly what kids of any generation would do if they were suddenly exempt from compulsory education.
So now that they've been forced back into the building, what are we doing to engage them? No wonder teachers are exhausted. They've always had a somewhat unappealing product to sell, but now their audience is even more disinterested. Unfortunately, I'm seeing many schools double down on traditional approaches to instruction. It's not surprising, then, to see students who need greater academic and social-emotional support than ever rebel.
I hope that schools can pivot soon, but I'm not optimistic. Pivoting quickly is not exactly the defining characteristic of public school systems. Additionally, the changes that might be most valuable — increased tutoring, shift to hands-on, project-based learning, smaller class sizes, and restorative practices — require significant investments in terms of resources and training.
Ultimately, making the changes that students (and their teachers) need will require a collective effort. Schools will need to partner more closely with families and communities. And communities will need to fight for more resources for schools. This is entwined with the fight against censorship in schools as well because, in the end, both are about ensuring all students the freedom to learn. However, to achieve that freedom for all students, we have to be willing to rethink what learning requires of students and educators in a world reshaped by COVID.
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