Two years ago I posted for the first time since the shutdown: Where Do We Stand Now? My concern was for the dumbing-down of expectations for graduation and the influx of dysfunctional online learning systems. I am thrilled, however, by the continuance of fundamental teaching and learning despite the challenges.
As for the COVID regime and our institutional responses to it, I was professionally agnostic and personally antagonistic. I made no recommendations to parents on responses one way or another. My only concern was that while working remotely students maintain academic rigor, practice, and engagement.
I was not in the classroom when the virus hit, so I fully understand the concerns of teachers and families. Still, through my ongoing academic coaching via video-conference with students I witnessed the breakdown of learning. So for next shut down, let’s set some rules:
- You can’t teach 20+ students at the same time via video-conference.
- When you’re not seeing a student face-to-face, individual feedback becomes not just more important but utterly essential.
The bell schedule is designed to group students into classrooms across a day. When there is no room to put them in, drop the schedule that’s designed for it. Lot’s to ponder there, should there be another shut down,
but for the return to the classroom I have one but one recommendation:
- Not only no mask mandates, but encouragement of not using them.
First of all, kids can’t learn under the regime of fear which the masks create. I had a rather illuminating conversation with a teacher soon after schools reopened. He told me that things seemed so much more normal, but he found that the kids were bringing into the classroom an enormous sense of guilt for ever having gotten sick or for possibly getting sick in the future. The masks reinforced those fears. Paranoia is not an effective public policy.
As for masks, let each student and family decide, but never, ever, never again require them of all persons. The “science” doesn’t support their efficacy, and the experience proves their destructiveness of interpersonal relations. Kids can’t learn when they can’t get feedback from a teacher because each are mumbling incomprehensively to one another through a mask — and if they can hear each other, most of the rest of the kids in the class can’t.
Oh, and oxygen is important.
– Michael