How to Begin Fighting a Viral Pandemic With Viral Learning
First there is denial, then anger, then comes the bargaining, depression, and acceptance. That is the progression of grief. Most of us who have made our careers in early childhood education are somewhere along this path right now, a journey that began abruptly in March as the reality of the pandemic finally caused us to take action.
I know this has been true for me. At first, I welcomed the closures as an accidental holiday, but as it dragged on I found myself angry: at the virus, at my government, at suggestions that we would be plopping young children in front of computer screens. I then spent time casting about for middle ground that I could live with, writing posts here and making videos with suggestions and ideas for how we could continue giving children hands-on, face-to-face opportunities while somehow keeping them safe. I didn't identify the depression when I was in the midst of it, but rather, as is often the case, only after the "black dog" began to release its fangs.
What's left is acceptance.
Yesterday, my good friend John Yiannoudis wrote a long piece about acceptance on his Facebook page (John wrote in Greek and here I've taken the liberty of smoothing out the automatic translation):
We can sit and mourn over the spilled milk, but we can also ride the wave of changes, experimenting for a new condition that will fit the world of the 21st Century, and beyond . . . Let us not forget that a child born in 2015 will one day be 35 years old. He won't even remember what the world was like, just as I was born in 1969 and don't remember the world without an electric fridge . . . If we adults continue to mourn the evil that has found us for much longer, the children will first look on sadly and feel sorry as well, but then they will get bored and hate us very quickly.
I had to sit with this for some time and I came to realize that without putting it into words, I've actually been sitting with CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: How to Begin Fighting a Viral Pandemic With Viral Learning
