Schools faced incredible challenges during the pandemic. There were no easy answers as to how to do this well. As I watched many school districts and educators face this dilemma, I noted that there were many different responses. Most responses included a little of this and a little of that--every system tried to listen to multiple voices and make the best possible decisions. It appears that no system did a perfect job, but every system had some wins and successes.
What's the next step?
The next logical steps are the following:
- Focus energy and resources on getting all members of school staffs vaccinated--that will mean that all educators can return to school.
- Work with parents to determine which children can go back to school and which must continue to be taught remotely--make sure that all students who can return to school do, and those that still need remote learning get that. It is likely that a small percentage of educators will not be able to get the vaccine for medical reasons and they can lead the remote learning.
- Let families advocate for students to get the vaccine.
- Evaluate honestly with detail what happened during the pandemic with the following questions:
- Which students thrived during pandemic learning and why did they thrive?
- Which students did not thrive during the pandemic and why didn't they thrive?
- How did programs grow and change during the pandemic in positive ways?
- How did schools change during the pandemic in positive ways?
- How do we want to go forward--what are the priorities including what new practices do we want to keep and what pre-pandemic practices do we want to return to?
Also, I believe that society has to reconsider the focus and goals of school and school supports. We saw clearly that many rely on school not only for education but also for child care--what does this mean for school schedules, funding, and staffing going forward? Have we expected schools to become families for children--is this good or not so good? How does this affect funding, staffing, and schedules? Looking ahead how should society's support for schools change, and how should society's support for families change?
There's lots to consider with regard to schools and the pandemic--we should make the time to analyze this situaiton with depth and use what we learn to improve schools and families going forward.