Shanker Blog: What's Next for Schools After Coronavirus? Here Are 5 Big Issues and Opportunities
This is post is our first in a new blog series entitled Teaching and Learning During a Pandemic, in which we invite guest authors to reflect on the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic for teaching and learning. Our contributor today is Andy Hargreaves who is Research Professor at Boston College. This blog post originally appeared in The Conversation. Future posts in the series will be compiled here.
No schools, no exams, more online learning and parents in COVID-19 lockdown with their kids. What a mess!
People are responding heroically. Some parents are working from home, others have lost their jobs and teachers are creating an entire new way of doing their jobs — not to mention the kids themselves, stuck inside without their friends. Somehow, we will get through this. When we do, how will things look when school starts again?
One of my university projects connects and supports the education leaders of six countries and two Canadian provinces to advance humanitarian values, including in their responses to COVID-19.
From communication with these leaders, and drawing on my project team’s expertise in educational leadership and large-scale change, here are five big and lasting issues and opportunities that we anticipate will surface once school starts again.
Extra student support needed
After weeks or months at home, students will have lost their teachers’ face-to-face support. Many young people will have experienced poverty and stress. They may have seen family members become ill, or worse. They might have had little chance to play outside.
Rates of domestic abuse and fights over custody arrangements have been on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many children will have lost the habits that schools teach them — sitting in a circle, waiting your turn, knowing how to listen and co-operate. More than a few will exhibit the signs of post-traumatic stress.
A lot will have spent hours looking at smartphones or playing video games.
Although governments may be anticipating upcoming austerity, we’ll actually need additional resources. We’ll need counsellors, mental heath specialists and learning support teachers to help our weakest learners and most vulnerable children settle down and catch up.
Prioritizing well-being
Well-being will no longer be dismissed as a fad. Before this crisis, there were murmurings that CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: What's Next for Schools After Coronavirus? Here Are 5 Big Issues and Opportunities | National Education Policy Center