ET, Our new world has only increased our students’ dependence on technology. Now, however, we’re not only going to have to construct a backup to get through this crisis, but we’re going to have to develop new, permanent systems, redesigned to meet the needs which have been so glaringly exposed in this crisis. Teachers’ practices and routines will look different this year, whether they’re holding class online or in-person. Deep Dive: What Should We Teach? What’s your take on this? We need another paradigm shift, where we look at our goals and aspirations for education, which are summed up in phrases like “No Child Left Behind,” “Every Student Succeeds,” and “All Means All,” and figure out how to build a system that has the capacity to deliver on that promise of equity and excellence in education for all of our students, and all means all. Here’s What Teaching Looks Like Under COVID-19, Deep Dive: Taking Care of Teachers: Round-the-Clock Communication Is Exhausting, Deep Dive: How Schools Can Redeploy Teachers in Creative Ways During COVID-19, Downloadable Guide: New Roles for Educators, Shielding Students From the Economic Storm, Bridging Distance for Learners With Special Needs, Do Parents Trust Schools? No, certainly not in my lifetime. But it’s a lot to take on. What to expect for education funding during the 2021 session: The Legislature passed an overhaul of the school finance system in 2019. Within this coronavirus crisis there is an opportunity to reshape American education. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all conti- nents. How does a principal or superintendent manage busy schedules to get all this done? GAZETTE: You’ve talked about some concrete changes that should be considered to level the playing field. When it comes to staffing, it’s likely that the usual roles and responsibilities will need to shift to allow a school to focus deeply on things that matter most: good instruction, since many students missed key content last spring; support for technology, since many students will be learning remotely; emotional support for students, who have likely experienced trauma in the pandemic; and connecting with families, whose help is required now more than ever as more learning takes place at home. There are things we can learn in the messiness of adapting through this crisis, which has revealed profound disparities in children’s access to support and opportunities. Some students will be fine during this crisis because they’ll have high-quality learning opportunities, whether it’s formal schooling or informal homeschooling of some kind coupled with various enrichment opportunities. EdWeek invited readers—and its staffers—to summarize this frightening, depressing, infuriating year in only six words. (Previous installments in our “How We Go Back to School” series have focused on staffing changes needed for health and safety.). These education prerequisites go far beyond the purview of school systems, but rather are the responsibility of communities and society at large. Universities across Central Virginia say participation in international education dropped during the pandemic. The top priority in a pandemic is ensuring that the learning environment for students is physically safe. Some students will be fine during this crisis because they’ll have high-quality learning opportunities, whether it’s formal schooling or informal homeschooling of some kind coupled with various enrichment opportunities. Now more than ever, schools need to give all students access to grade-level work, experts say. ... It’s incumbent on our education … Doing so can widen equity gaps. Education Week reporters Catherine Gewertz and Sarah Schwartz interviewed 50 teachers, instructional leaders, and curriculum and assessment experts, and reviewed dozens of documents for this installment. In this section, we explore staffing ideas that some schools are implementing to better support students’ academic and emotional needs, whether they’re in the building or learning from home. Deep Dive: What Should We Teach? We can see this playing out now as our lower-income and more heterogeneous school districts struggle over whether to proceed with online instruction when not everyone can access it. We have to reconceptualize the whole job of child development and education, and construct systems that meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful. That’s a great start but, in the long run, I think we can do better than that. Running a school during a pandemic is like building a plane while flying. The COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge to education systems. Virtually all parents are doing some form of homeschooling, whether they want to or not. Here’s How, Deep Dive: Don’t Rush to ‘Diagnose’ Learning Loss With a Formal Test. We tend to regard our school systems uniformly, but actually schools are widely different in their operations and impact on children, just as our students themselves are very different from one another. Professional development will carry an outsized burden this fall, too, as school staff members require training to serve not only as instructors, but as social-emotional supports for students. Andrew Cuomo as Henry V to cereal for dinner — in the shower, Office of Work/Life director talks about keeping things in balance while under self-quarantine. “It’s aspirational,” said Dan Domenech, the executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. This Viewpoint offers guidance to teachers, institutional heads, and officials on addressing the crisis. Instead, they’re urging schools to focus deeply on instructional techniques and informal tests in the classroom. Story at a glance. Digital classrooms Educational technology is coming of age during the pandemic. We’re in uncharted territory. Disadvantaged students suffer the consequences of those gaps more than affluent children, who typically have lots of opportunities to fill in those gaps. For example, we have always had large gaps in students’ learning opportunities after school, weekends, and in the summer. For most Physical Education teachers, everything changed when schools began to move to online learning in the early days of the pandemic. Again, in 1983, the report “Nation at Risk” warned of a similar risk: Our education system wasn’t up to the demands of a high-skills/high-knowledge economy. GAZETTE: Is that one of the silver linings of this public health crisis? All of our children should have the technology they need to learn outside of school. But there are some priorities—like engaging with students, providing access to cognitively demanding work, and responding to formative assessment—that teachers can address in any environment. This makes digital literacy no longer a “nice to have” but a “need to have.” How do we ensure that every student can navigate. Students in certain school districts don’t have those affordances right now because often the school districts don’t have the budget to do this, but federal, state, and local taxpayers are starting to see the imperative for coming together to meet this need. Deep Dive: Classroom Routines Must Change. Teachers will need to create flexible, adaptable assignments that students can complete in different environments and with varied levels of technology access. They’ll also have to keep instruction coherent across online and in-person settings, since many districts plan to offer hybrid schedules. Instead, instructional leaders need to create a range of entry points into the grade-level content—scaffolds for students who require them, and places where teachers can refresh or reteach concepts that students need to understand in order to succeed this fall. State Superintendent Hoffman, education expert ask for legislature to 'grade with grace' during pandemic year Students throughout Arizona are experiencing learning loss due to the pandemic … Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvard news. “In this situation, we don’t simply want to frantically struggle to restore the status quo because the status quo wasn’t operating at an effective level and certainly wasn’t serving all of our children fairly.”, Assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on correctional institutions, Democrats have both Congress and the White House — but not a free hand, Plant-based diet may feed key gut microbes, Highly infectious coronavirus variant dampens prospects for summer return to normal, Time to fix American education with race-for-space resolve, ‘If you remain mostly upright, you are doing it well enough’. How should international education work during a pandemic that largely prevents travel? And we haven’t done a very good job of providing these. And again, we have widely variable capacity in our families and school systems. As we move beyond test scores to a more holistic picture of students and school, Wed., January 13, 2021, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. During the pandemic, teachers across the country have been forced to find ways to reach their students in a manner suited to their needs: by recording videos for children who missed synchronous lessons, sending worksheets home with kids who lacked internet access and adjusting deadlines to fit students’ schedules. REVILLE: We’ve certainly had school closures in particular jurisdictions after a natural disaster, like in New Orleans after the hurricane. In order for children to come to school ready to learn, they need a wide array of essential supports and opportunities outside of school. GAZETTE: What lessons did school districts around the country learn from school closures in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and other similar school closings? In yet another example of this, a recent study has found that a significant proportion of children with disabilities were excluded from education during the pandemic … The pandemic has forced so many changes that experts are saying teachers and other school staff members need training on a wide range of things. Despite some challenges, high schoolers say … To … The most obvious place to start for schools is working on equitable access to educational technology as a way to close the digital-learning gap. In the building, social distancing could put an end to the group projects and partner work that are central to many teachers’ pedagogy. Germany's quick response to the pandemic in the spring allowed it to get some children back in schools after just a few weeks. 'Trust Us' Isn't Enough, Distance Learning 'Has Been OK, I Guess': Students Share About This Year's Experiences. When teachers go back to school this fall, the classroom as they’ve known it will be gone, and their instruction will be more critical than ever. However, that seems unlikely. Here's what they said. All of that has created a new set of staffing and professional development challenges for school and district leaders. Here’s a sampling of the topics most frequently mentioned as especially important for PD this year: Feel like a long list? A lot of parents are struggling with that. “In an environment like this, where there is so much going on at the same time, it’s true, there is an awful lot to cover.”. Do these massive school closures have any precedent in the history of the United States? How can leaders forced to consider distance learning as the primary mode of education during the coronavirus pandemic do … Schools might well need to respond to that reality by forging new roles or responsibilities for staff members—making one teacher the “remote lead,” or creating new cross-grade teams to support progressions in learning. We felt vulnerable, like our defenses were down, like a nation at risk. That’s where a rethought approach to assessment can play a role. 5 Steps for Keeping Kids on Track This FallDeep Dive: How to Make Lessons Cohesive When Teaching Both Remote and In-Person ClassesDownloadable Guide: Deciding What to Teach? What can school systems do to address that gap? In other cases, there is virtually nothing going on at the school level, and everything falls to the parents. Shutting down should not be an option. “Students without reliable, fast internet or suitable devices for schoolwork or … That’s a daunting combination, but it’s what the pandemic has delivered. In order to learn, children need equal access to health care, food, clean water, stable housing, and out-of-school enrichment opportunities, to name just a few preconditions. Training on how to respond to students’ unfinished learning and their emotional needs will likely be two of the other most common areas of focus, he said. For years, the success of our students has been measured by two arbitrary constructs — proficiency and time. 5 Steps for Keeping Kids on Track This Fall, Deep Dive: How to Make Lessons Cohesive When Teaching Both Remote and In-Person Classes, Downloadable Guide: Deciding What to Teach? DigitalVision Vectors/Getty and Laura Baker/Education Week. As former secretary of education for Massachusetts, Paul Reville is keenly aware of the financial and resource disparities between districts, schools, and individual students. REVILLE: I think the lessons we’ve learned are that it’s good [for school districts] to have a backup system, if they can afford it. "We need to look holistically, at the entirety of children’s lives.". How We Go Back to School is supported in part by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. We should be asking why the adults always control the learning. Regular teacher-student interaction is critical to remote and hybrid learning. Now that their entire learning lives, as well as their actual physical lives, are outside of school, those differences and disparities come into vivid view. The pressing challenge facing our national, state and local leaders of how to structure K-12 education during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has only intensified during the past few weeks. It’s particularly important this year, experts say, to use each kind of assessment for the right purposes, and to avoid overidentifying struggling students, English-learners, or students with special needs for remediation. And now, as the new school year approaches, it’s led experts to wave cautionary flags that say: Be very careful about how you handle testing this year. ET, The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the nation’s mental health and equity concerns, has accelerated the shift in the accountability landscape. Through eight installments, Education Week explores the steps administrators need to take to ensure the safety of students and faculty. Reassuring students and parents is a vital element of institutional response. GAZETTE: Schools in Massachusetts are closed until May 4. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. With so much riding on instruction, districts need to plan for it with the same rigor they’ve applied to more operational aspects of reopening. This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. But on this scale? There is a powerful case for making meaning parental engagement a critical piece of what K-12 education looks like during and after this pandemic. One way to know what has been lost is through testing, but is it, Thu., January 21, 2021, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. REVILLE: That should be a medically based judgment call that will be best made several weeks from now. Here’s What Teaching Looks Like Under COVID-19Deep Dive: Taking Care of Teachers: Round-the-Clock Communication Is Exhausting. And whether teachers will feel adequately prepared and supported to meet the coming year’s challenges remains an open question. What preparations should institutions make in the short time available and how do they address students’ needs by level and field of study? We have to find some middle ground, and that means the state and local school districts are going to have to act urgently and nimbly to fill in the gaps in technology and internet access. During the influenza pandemic in 1918, even though the world was a … Teresa Vazquez, a teacher in Fort Wayne, Ind., remotely teaches a Spanish 1 class to students at Monroe High School in Albany, Ga. Police hold back pro-Trump rioters who tried to break through a police barrier Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. It’s a lot to take on even as the ground shifts under teachers’ feet. As if staffing isn’t challenging enough, professional development is shaping up to be a full plate all by itself. In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions around the world to rapidly switch to remote learning. Online, they will have to develop relationships and classroom routines with students they may have never met in person. Teaching Physical Education is hard enough as it is, but it’s become much more challenging in recent months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Domenech imagines most districts will focus heavily on PD for remote learning, because so many teachers have not received deep training on it. ©2020 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. recognizing trauma in children and providing support; weaving social-emotional skills into academic instruction (watch for more on this in Installment 7); deepening instructional skills for the most vulnerable students; maximizing the effectiveness and engagement of your online instruction; pivoting easily from online to in-person instruction; building new kinds of professional-learning communities that work as well remotely as in person; analyzing the year’s curriculum and identifying the highest priority standards to focus on; shifting thinking about assessment to focus heavily on informal classroom assessments; and remediating on just the few, key concepts students need most for the next unit. Deep Dive: How Schools Can Redeploy Teachers in Creative Ways During COVID-19Downloadable Guide: New Roles for Educators, Contributors:Reporters: Catherine Gewertz, Sarah SchwartzDesigners/Visual artists: Laura Baker, Emma Patti Harris, Francis Sheehan, Vanessa Solis, Gina TomkoIllustrator: Stephanie Shafer for Education WeekPhoto editor: Jaclyn BorowskiWeb producers: Mike Bock, Stacey Decker, Hyon-Young KimVisual project editor: Emma Patti HarrisProject editor: Liana LoewusCoverage of whole-child approaches to learning is supported in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, at www.chanzuckerberg.com. According to the Education Week survey, it’s lower-income families who are more likely to be choosing homeschooling during the pandemic. While a dip was expected due to health risks, they say a tense political climate also contributed to the decrease in international students. 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