We are not the same
I covered a science class earlier this week. I made a point to tell the students every wonderful thing they did. Thank you for having your equipment ready. I’m so glad you asked for my help. Thank you for being so polite when borrowing charging cords. I love how you are using your resources. Nice job working problems on your scrap paper. Thank you for helping your neighbor! With five minutes left of class, 95% of the students had successfully completed the assignment, and yes, they were watching YouTube videos or playing games on the computer while waiting for class to end — they were managing themselves, allowing me to help those who weren’t finished. And we were happy, we were proud of ourselves, we were working together in a learning community. It was almost like a normal seventh-grade classroom pre-pandemic, except… we only completed about 60% of what we would have covered in one class before. Why? Because the students needed more structure, prompts, and positive reinforcements; they needed more scaffolding and more time to think.
In my last post, I said we needed to let the fire out. I stand by that. Additionally, I think we need to be loud and clear that although we are struggling, we are not MERELY surviving. The mindset that we are not achieving is hurting us — teachers and students. Teachers are constantly being made to feel that they are not good enough, they don’t work hard enough, that they don’t do enough. I am not going to sign off on that.
We have students who are in 6th grade who haven’t been in a school building since they were 4th graders. We have 7th graders who missed all the careful onboarding 6th graders experience as they transition to middle school. We have 8th graders who have accessed and explored adult content when school buildings were closed who have not experienced managing themselves in a learning community as young adults. The kids are different. Talking about “why” is only helpful if we are going to be responsive to that “why” to move forward.
If teachers teach the way we used to, if we expect students to have the classroom and community skills they had before the pandemic, if we respond to kids like “typical” middle school students, we are going to be disappointed. We are going to be frustrated. We are going to fail.
And here’s the thing we have to recognize and respond to: This work cannot be the same as it was before. We — students and teachers — are different now, and our goals must be refined to provide the best instruction and environment for our current learners. I refuse to bill our teaching and learning as “surviving” or “drowning.” We are struggling because we are learning new things. Critics who want to bemoan learning loss or measure people in a school based on “before the pandemic” are not helping. District and state mandates must adapt. ICEL, anyone? We control instruction, curriculum, and environment. We respond to the learner. We have to teach and engage the students we have here now, students who are not like the middle schoolers we had before March 13, 2019. And that is more than enough.