In education we often live with one foot in the present and the other in the future. And this has been more true during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are both making changes on the go as we match learning systems to different stages of the pandemic, while also looking for lessons learned during this time as we prepare for a post-pandemic education system. There are many ideas to take from the last 12 months that will likely impact our systems for a generation, here are 7 that I have seen:
A Nationalized Conversation – Canada is one of the few countries without a major role for the Federal government in education. That said, there has been more connections than ever across this country as provinces have taken similar health approaches in schools, and Canadian educators have looked to connect digitally. With the Federal Government investing one billion dollars in national education it has helped emphasize the connections. The networking seems destined to continue, and even though education falls to provincial governments and local jurisdiction, from Indigenous Education, to technology access to literacy there are many important national connection points that need to continue.
Expectations Around Video and Social Media – Advocacy for the use of video and social media in schools and districts is not new, but nothing like a pandemic to make it obvious that non-traditional tools are needed. Now, not that they are the only tools, but whether is is sharing information nights with school communities, or holiday concerts or assemblies, video is just expected. We see this trend with leadership as well. I have argued for a while that leaders need to be in the digital game, and that is more true than ever. I appreciate what my BC colleague Jordan Tinney has been able to do, making a massive district feel like a small community through the use of digital tools and regular engagement.
High schools will forever be different – I often hear, “the quarter system is not new, this is not that innovative.” And this is true (quarter system is students taking only 2 courses at a time) – examples of the system in BC date back decades. The best of what I have seen with secondary schools is not the particular block structure but what has come about because of the scheduling. What we have seen includes: courses have become less about time in a seat, real conversations about what is essential have been prioritized, greater flexible time for students to make choices over their learning, and a value placed on teacher student relationship in high school with fewer teacher contacts for each learner. Now, many of these could have been done without the quarter system, but the combination of factors of fewer classes, safety rules that limit students in some classes, and a widespread curiosity for new models has led to some exciting work.
Health and Education are Permanent Partners – Health and Education have always worked closely together. But this year is completely different. We are in daily contact – and not just at a superficial level, we have got to know each others’ work. So, going forward these relationships built through COVID will carry over. On everything from vaping to physical literacy to mental health to just broadly building a stronger community we will be more explicit partners.
Digitization is Here – We have been saying for more than a decade that we were moving digital on the education side with textbooks and other learning resources and on the administrative side with forms and processes. And then, after saying it, we have often not fully invested in the tools, choosing to live with one foot in the past paper world and one foot dipping its toes in the digital world. We have had no choice but to go digital in many places over the last 12 months, and again this does not show any signs of going back. There is finally far greater alignment between how we say we want education and what it looks like.
Equity, Equity, Equity – The pandemic has on one hand brought the challenges of equity in many forms to the forefront and also showed things we have said were almost impossible, are possible. You have seen me argue before in this blog, “if we can figure out how to have garbage picked up at every house we surely can figure out how to get these same houses wifi” and like with garbage pick-up it should just be expected. On the concerning side, we saw vast differences in the access to tools like technology and also in the access to opportunities during the pandemic. We also, though, figured out how to get digital devices into the hands of almost all students – something we deemed impossible until recently. Post pandemic we need to keep this focus. The pandemic has put a spotlight on where we need to do better – from equity of technology, to equity of experiences.
Learning is often an outdoor activity – Again, we are finally doing what we have said for a long time is the right thing. Particularly in our younger grades our students are spending time outside connecting to nature and having authentic real world experiences. Our medical officials have encouraged our students to spend more time outside. Many educational experts have already been arguing the powerful pedagogy of this, for many years. Now rather than just building playgrounds on school grounds, we are looking to create outdoor learning spaces. From school gardens, to urban agriculture, the future of schooling needs to be more time outside. And how exciting – that school could be both more digital and more connected to the earth. While some would view these ideas is incompatible, but really can be complimentary.
Our greatest challenge of the next 12-24 months is to ensure that pieces of all 7 of these ideas are not lost and are part of our system going forward. There will be a lot of noise to “go back to normal.” When we meet with system and school leaders – nobody wants that – we had a good system, that has been taxed by a pandemic but there is learning that can make us even a better system as we look to the fall of 2021 and beyond.
It is a stressful and exhausting time to be an educator, but it is also an exciting time as we look for ways to have our lived experience match the system we have been envisioning for much of this century.
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