When it comes to schooling everything is essential. At least that is what we are made to believe. While I often hear about what should be added to schools, I never hear any arguments about what should be removed to make space for new content. One of the most prolific of these debate is handwriting – which I waded into a decade ago (and won’t again here). One lesson from the handwriting debate is as much as we want schools to be doing more and different things, we are pained to think that our kids could miss out by not having everything required in school that we had mandated for us. We generally seem to wish our kids to have all the same experiences we had, just more and better.
COVID has really forced us to have these conversation around what is essential, in ways that we were unable or unwilling to do outside of a pandemic. No longer could we keep doing things because we had always done it, or everyone else was doing it in their classes. We have had to truly adopt the Marcus Aurelius quote, “Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary.”
I have written before about the particular impact of COVID on high schools. HERE is a recent post on COVID edu-trends that will stick and HERE is a link to a recent white paper that Dean Shareski produced working with over 200 educators from our region examining scheduling, blended learning, assessment and wellness in our secondary schools in COVID and beyond.
More than anything else, COVID has really made us rethink the use of time in schools. In the pre-COVID era, we had neatly organized blocks, all of the same length, with each course the same number of blocks over the year. Some teachers had this planned down to the minute. While jurisdictions across North America have faced different realities, the last year has seen shifts from “regular” blocks, to virtual, to hybrid to new models. In our district, there is now more flexible time for students, and blocks are of different lengths on different days. The traditional block model has been disrupted. And while we can’t ignore that these efforts are occurring in a pandemic – the new models are working for many students.
This year has been both utterly exhausting and invigorating for many colleagues. They have had to reinvent their courses from the ground-up. And in doing so they have cut out a bunch of stuff that now no longer is as necessary as it seemed, but they have also been able to give renewed energy to other materials – content and competencies that are truly essential and ones which bring out the passion of the students and teachers.
Asking ourselves, Is this essential? is always a good question to ask. But of course, we often don’t – not just in schools, but in many parts of our lives and society. COVID is making us take a hard look at content and competencies and the results are showing that we are building back a schooling system that is different than the one we had just a couple of years ago.
cultureofyes.ca 
Schooling out of home always requires a lot of self-motivation and application on the part of the student, especially without the benefit of peer pressure. Intrinsic motivation becomes critical. As students realize personal approaches and practices that are the best-fit for their personal learning, teachers can present and encourage more variety in how to understand, practice and retain, or learn. Handwriting can be encouraged to give intrinsic rewards as opposed to writing boring lines for someone else. A good starting place is simply perfecting student signatures; and also using two markers held to simultaneously write at a slant on large sheets, making posters; and writing notes on post its to leave around the house. There are numerous benefits in giving independence from computer screens for written expression.
As usual a great post Chris….as the saying goes “necessity is the mother of invention”. As we move through this process of teaching and living during a pandemic there is one word I focus on; that word is simplicity. The pandemic has altered all of our lives, but if we can embrace the simplicity of it all (in my case less games to referee in basketball, less games of baseball to umpire, less running around) we have time to enjoy a slower pace of life.
The same applies to teaching. The re-designed curriculum has moved from a horizontal persepective to a more vertical one; as a teacher I can spend time on a topic that interests the students and not worry about teaching to the “end”.
All the best and stay safe.
Thanks Brent. I think the addition of simplicity is really good. We can absolutely overthink and over commit in our lives and in our teaching. I hadn’t really thought about the connection between the shifts in time we are seeing in secondary schools as it relates to the revised curriculum but it is a good one. The pandemic and the rethinking of time has come just after we have completely shifted curriculum to give permission to think differently. I am so curious what next year and the year after will look like in our high schools. I am absolutely convinced they have shifted forever.
[…] Blogging in a Pandemic and Beyond, 7 COVID Edu Trends That Will Stick, What We Have Missed, Is This Essential? and Resetting Blended Learning). And I am sure there will be more to write about in the fall. […]