I'm dismayed with the news related to schools today, and I am wondering what can be done. First, I am dismayed by the worried, tired, concerned voices of teachers, families and students. This family-school team at the forefront of education demands the most voice and focus at this juncture. Instead, too many leaders, distanced from the day-to-day operations of school and family life appear to take priority in the home-school discussions, rather than those who are at the front line of what happens in schools. How can we remedy this situation?
Few to no one-size-fits-all solutions
Before I discuss what I believe will improve this situation, it is important to note that there are few to no one-size-fits-all solutions in education. Every school and every school community is different and this is vital to consider when considering what will work best for students and families in your community. A small, rural district will likely have different needs and solutions than a large, urban district. What all districts have in common, however, is that personal, student-centered solutions are almost always best, and to begin with the needs of students, families and educators in each district is the first priority--what do they need to succeed?
Assessment
Next it is vital to assess the situation for your family, classroom, school and school community beginning with the reality of the situation. What are the priorities, and how can you best assess the current status of those priorities?
Once a good assessment is complete, then you have to prioritize your actions in order to meet the best possible outcomes.
I assume that all communities will put safety as a top priority, and then I would expect wellness to be the second priority and after that, the identified academic standards and goals.
Safety
It is essential that every school community define what it means to be safe in the community and at school, then work to ensure that all educational environments are safe. Safety assessments need to include the experiences and opinions of all those at the front line including students, families and educators. No voice can be left out of this discussion and no safety concern dismissed. Also, multiple solutions must be considered, and with these solutions, it may be that students, educators and families are given more choice. For example, perhaps there will be multiple learning paths including all-remote, all in-class and mixed paths of learning available that educators, students and families can choose from.
Wellness
New research and information must be considered as school communities assess wellness. We know a lot about what makes people physically and mentally fit today, and it has to be a top priority in every school community. Too many school communities have been remiss when considering the wellness of educators, students and families, and there is a lot of work to be done in this regard. School inside/outside environments, infrastructure and programming are often mired in outdated practices that don't forward the best possible wellness for all involved. For any school community to move forward, wellness has to be a top priority.
Academic Standards
Every school community at every level has to identify their top three-ten academic standards they will promote for each and every student. Then those at each level have to work together to achieve those standards. As a former elementary school teacher, I would imagine that reading, writing, math and a solid foundation of science/social studies knowledge/experiences would be the priorities for academic standards at the elementary level. Then it is up to every school community including teachers, families and students to figure out how they will work towards meeting those standards including regular assessment, good programming and adequate staffing.
It is time to modernize schools in more humane and researched ways by prioritizing safety, wellness and identified academic standards. There's significant work to do to update efforts related to wellness and safety--two areas of school life that are struggling due, in part, to the breakdown of communities, lack of modern human resources, poverty, climate change results and the pandemic.
Distance from quick-fix, get-rich-quick schemes and schemers
Too many distanced from the front line of education want to push their quick fix, unknowing solutions onto education systems. Educators must meet these schemes with curious skeptism. There is definitely room for change and modernization in education, but we cannot put profit or quick-fix schemes ahead of what is right and good for students' long term benefit. In some ways, this makes me think of the Amazon-U.S. Postal Service connection. The Postal Service is clearly too slow and outdated in many ways, yet the human service it provides neighborhoods and individuals throughout the country is significant and substantial. Amazon's somewhat cold, profit-motive is highly organized and, in many ways, service oriented. The fact that I can access very helpful products and have them delivered to my house within days is amazing. Amazon's quick way of getting many of their customers to sign onto Prime and provide critical information such as addresses and phone numbers in exchange for a few free films and shipping costs was a brilliant way to get an extraordinary customer base. Amazon has a lot to offer, but so does the Postal Service--the combination of the two could result in a humane service organization that's efficient and modern too. We need to combine modern ideas that may update education in significant ways, but we cannot let profit overtake the humanity that is key to any good education institution. There is a way to combine both ways of thinking to come up with a humane, modern, successful educational system.
There is lots of work to do, and this work has to begin with realigning resources and efforts to meet these needs with a bottom-up approach that takes the needs, experiences and ideas of parents, teachers and students at the front line seriously and works to coordinate and collaborate those voices into one strong system that serves students well. We can do that.