What's Next in Education?

We all have felt the past year’s devastation, death and adaptation to what people refer to as the “new normal”. I believe this is incorrect, there is nothing “normal” about our new lives, our profession of teaching and for me, the development of partnerships, supporting teachers, supporting schools and consulting with government agencies globally.

I believe as we are coming out of the summer and are in the midst of the “post-COVID” year in education teachers and students in kindergarten to high school will feel the effects of the pandemic for much longer than anyone expects.

When I look at the P/TK-20 space as a whole, I believe it will take a longer time for schools to recover, even by overly-conservative estimates.

When looking at higher education, I believe that faculty and colleges will “shift” their methods of delivering content to allow for more expanded understanding of students’ often demanding lives and how the pandemic may have affected them and their families.

The issue comes in the disparity of socioeconomic status and the communities overall economic health prior to the pandemic. Research has shown that affluent communities rebound much faster after a disaster. The research has also shown the opposite for communities (especially communities of color) that were struggling prior to the disaster are still struggling post the disaster.

The research also shows that recovery times are almost directly correlated to socioeconomic status for all aspects of education. How come we aren't talking about this? Focusing on the disparities in education? How about we look at another issue as well, how the pandemic disemboweled of high school and college athletics during the pandemic and in the post pandemic world.

We can’t assume business will be back to normal anytime soon, (then again, what is normal)?

Unlike many disasters, hurricanes, fires or tornadoes, the pandemic has no clear end date. This is a huge problem, even if I try, I can’t think that this will be over anytime soon.

We’re living in the midst of this “disaster,” the Delta variant threw a curve into the mix, now the virus is ramping up globally again.

There are so many issues that we still need to think about as we return to school in so many places. There is one point we need to remember as we move forward.

We need to remember that teachers are humans (yes, super human) but, they WILL become burned out by teaching in stressful situations. This pandemic developed stressors that include teachers caring for their own children or family members or experiencing a death in the family. These things are usually anomalies to happen at the same time, but unfortunately, they are more so the norm currently for many of our teachers and administrators (as well as other ancillary school staff).

The reality of making sure that students basic, emotional, academic and behavioral needs are met, I am concerned that educators will be left behind and the teaching workforce will be decimated by this pandemic.

We need to focus on these issues and address them NOW, before it’s too late and we are chasing the dream with a generation that is ill equipped to be globally competitive.