The School Opening Dilemma.

I said it before and I will say it again. When it comes to how schools should operate in the fall I believe we are creating our approach by asking the wrong question. The major question should not focus on how we will effectively deliver content. Instead, the question we should prioritize in answering, is how will we effectively CONNECT with our students and how will they effectively CONNECT with each other?

If we focus on building healthy connections between students, teachers and parents, in the digital and the physical world, then we can have a more effective understanding of how we will deliver our content and instruction. Beyond that we will also gain a greater understanding of how we can create healthy virtual environments that cultivate positive youth engagement and development as well.

The reality is we are not going back to the way things were. It is foolhardy to think so. While we know there were many missteps with remote learning in the spring, we should not be too hard on ourselves. I mean, we were (are) dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic. This was a “Break glass for emergency only!” moment if there ever was one. So, instead of throwing remote learning away or looking at it as a simple stop gap until we are able to convene in person and en mass again, far better is it to look at what we learned, discovered; talk about our "ah ha!" moments and strengthen those while SLOWLY working our way back into human to human interaction.

I get it. This is what we are not used to. We also think our children will lose a lot because of what happened in the spring. But to think that is to underestimate and resiliency, improvisation and creativity of our youth and us as human beings. Through every single crisis, whether global or domestic, we have found the resiliency to survive and then thrive. In fact, history is ripe with events where mass populations have seen their lives disrupted for years and, in some cases, decades. Yet, through it all, they were able to not just rebound but evolve. So maybe we should step back and take a deep breath here and instead of trying to recapture the past take a look and see what is our future. Use this moment to ask what is our next step of evolving our society?

For my students, mentees and my own children I would often say "one does not grow without growing pains." While we may not like it, adversities such as the one we are currently experiencing, are indeed growing pains when you compare us to where we stand in the universe. So lets grow. Lets breathe. Lets build. We will get back to real human interaction when the time is right. Till then, lets take this time to see all of our good and bad as human beings and use it to educate our youth, even ourselves to be better people.

Who knows? In the irony of all irony, if we were to take this path, this may end up going down as the greatest thought provoking year for all of us, including our children, ever.

Just Food for Thought