For Better or Worse

We can take situations in life and allow them to change us for better or worse.

If I’m being honest, some of my best learning and growth as a person and leader has come from facing adversity. You can learn a lot about a person AND yourself handling situations in the worst of times.

This pandemic, the world-wide pause on life and education as we know it, has taught us a lot about ourselves and our students. We’ve been thrust into situations and educational approaches we couldn't ever imagine a year ago. Our children are accomplishing tasks beyond our expectations and educators are remarkably reimagining learning day after day.

We should not lose sight of the trauma that has been caused by COVID-19, but I am urging our fearless educators to think about our mindset and ones we impose on our students. We have the power to look at this year as some of the best professional learning and transformational periods we’ve ever experienced.

The power to change your world for the better can be NOW! Along with the challenges, the learning, for all of us is happening NOW! Regardless what Time magazine says, this HAS NOT been a lost year. Teaching IS happening, learning IS happening.

In addition to content, our students have learned:

• Self management

• Increased flexibility

• Problem solving

• Resilience

• Technology skills

The situation for better is capitalizing on this learning and crafting a system that will allow our students to take these skills and go farther than we ever could have previously imagined!

The situation for worse would be to take our students and bring them back in to our brick and mortar schools only to compare them to pre-pandemic students, with pre-pandemic accountability, using only pre-pandemic practices.

We can forget all of the experiences and learning we are going through now and revert back to ‘before’ OR we can do the unthinkable and allow this challenging time to transform our practices for the better! We have a choice if we are going to let these circumstances change us for better or worse.

Here are four things to think about as we capitalize on the disruptive innovation moving forward:

• Prioritize Instructional Standards: Everyday as adults we prioritize our actions and time for the best outcome. We’ve learned how to do this in the world of education during this time also. In some ways the pandemic has uncovered learning content inequities and curricular complexities that have always existed. When we compounded that with loss of instructional time, a research-focused prioritization of standards becomes a must! We’ve learned more is not always better, so to ensure our students precious time is spent on high quality standards that can leverage learning opportunities we can increase our focus on the WHAT.

• Develop Authentic Formative Assessments to Guide Instruction: Educators KNOW assessments. We can eat, breath and dream about assessments. However, through this pandemic we’ve been charged with more flexible and creative options to gauge our students learning and drive instruction. I urge you, DON’T FORGET about these strategies you’ve learned. Standardized assessments have a purpose and a role in our work, but nothing replaces a teacher’s ongoing feedback of students learning. When we vary and offer choice and voice within authentic learning assessments our students have the true individualization they deserve!

• Allow for Increased Flexibility and Innovation in Student Groupings: For far too long we’ve been stuck in ‘flexible’ but handicapping grouping structures. Is it fair to hold every child, with varying life experiences and circumstances, to the same accountability ‘track’ with the same instructional practices? Does age have to require which content students are exposed to? We’ve learned now more than ever we can be creative, flexible and throw away those old practices to ensure continuous acceleration of learning for ALL.

• Leverage Technology to Personalize Learning Opportunities: Every aspect of our world is personalized and our educational experiences should be too. In order to reach our students virtually, we’ve been able to do this for the past year. When our students return to full in-person learning, put yourself in their shoes. Do you want to give up the flexibility and personalized experiences you've been able to have this year? They don't want to either! We can’t solely rely on technology or online platforms, but we can and should use them to leverage personalization and interest for students.

We have changed.

Our students have changed.

When you doubt yourself remember: none of us could have imagine ourselves in this place a year ago. This HAS NOT been the lost year! Don’t limit your organization, yourself or the potential of your students!

We have ALL lived through this disruptive innovation. We can ALL choose to capitalize on our learning and allow this time to transform ourselves and our practices…..for the better!