“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
-Albert Einstein
Academic life (let’s be honest…. LIFE) as we all knew it changed in March of 2020 for most of the country, and the world. Students, educators, school systems, state agencies, even businesses were all sent scrambling to find ways to continue through an unprecedented global pandemic. Virtual Learning, Distance Learning, Non-Traditional Education…no matter what name was assigned to the situation in your area, we all know, it was a situation! And a very traumatic one.
Educators spent days worrying about when and how they would be able to continue effectively teaching their students, and many nights were spent just worrying about the general well-being and safety of students. And the reality is, we know many, many students went through very traumatic, and uncertain times during this whirlwind. Especially in the beginning. It was hard for us as adults to know which direction to go, so I can only imagine the uncertainty that many students were feeling. However, as time moved on, the regime of a new way of schooling started to fall back into place for most of the country. Devices were distributed, systems and processes were created and as students(and teachers!) became more digitally and technologically literate, things begin to smooth out.
Now that we are on the rebound, moving back into physical spaces and places of learning, we have to start thinking about how we can meet the needs of our students. And this is a very important task for us as educators considering that student needs (academically, socially/emotionally, physically) are more scattered, and widespread gaps are larger than ever before. We must look at what we CAN do. We need to approach this fall, and this new opportunity, with a glass half full mentality so we can not only move forward, but thrive in our new “normal”.
That leads me to my motive and rationale of the ideas I am sharing in this blog post…what “good” can we derive from this “situation”? How can we turn this traumatic experience into triumphant experiences in our classrooms and schools in the fall? How can we turn aftermath into opportunity?
Coming up in my next three blog posts, I am going to identify three areas/skills that have been a biproduct of the aftermath, but stand out to me as opportunities to launch learning and improve our instructional practices and student learning experiences in our classrooms.
Coming up next…Part 1: Digital and Technological Literacy…
Teach Infused With Tech By: RF 