A guide to rethinking education after the pandemic
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When the pandemic hit and much of the world went into lockdown, schools everywhere were forced to adapt. Much of the national media coverage made the outcome look like a complete disaster: students everywhere retreated. Teachers are burned out. And parents are at a loss. Indeed, there have been many challenges for educators during this health crisis.
But there is another story. It’s a story of rebirth, opportunity, hope, and a beacon of light.
The innovators who blazed new trails during the pandemic, the students who learned more than they knew, the teachers who felt unconventional, the administrators who mobilized the bureaucracy known for its inertia, and the first There were those who rose to the occasion, such as the guardians seen in Hand that another world is possible. There have been many individuals and organizations who know this is a once-in-a-millennium moment, rethinking the past, experimenting with what can be done to create an upgraded model of education and a better school experience. .
Michael Horn’s new book, From Restart to Reinvention: (Re)Creating Schools for Every Child, highlights the leading organizations and individuals who captured the moment. Because I was lucky enough to have a quirky vision that suddenly made sense to try during the pandemic lockdown. Because they were forced to adapt and had no other choice. From them, Horn sheds light and helps others learn a brighter path.
This book is, in a way, a guidebook on where to go now in terms of education.
In short, he suggests education as:
- Let go of your obsession with sitting and move instead to mastery-based learning.
- Rethink grading and assessment and turn it into meaningful feedback to improve learning and signal strength of character.
- Rethink the organizational model of education – Divide the role of one teacher and delegate it to a team of educators who work collaboratively and are given the time and process to do so.
But his book is also a call to arms. We need to understand that once the pandemic becomes a memory, the real threat begins. If schools trying to get back to business as usual put more effort into things that weren’t actually working, it would create a more entrenched pattern that would stiffen bureaucracy and push educators far ahead. I’m sure you’ll be even more trapped in the bad practices you’ve had.
This book hits an important moment for school. Most people are now back to face-to-face instruction. But not all students have returned after lockdown. More than 1 million parents are sticking with homeschooling, co-education, unschooling or opting out of the traditional system.
Here are some of the problems in our school system that have come to light during the pandemic.
- The time remains constant even though each student’s learning fluctuates.
- Rather than helping students learn and progress, our assessment and grading system classifies students in very harmful ways.
- Teachers are exhausted and fed up, and many are on the verge of retirement.
- While students were as bored with Zoom as we were, parents saw firsthand that listening to teachers provide content for long periods of time wasn’t the best way to learn.
- The curriculum largely covers obsolete subjects defined around 1913, and the curriculum squeezes out the more useful learning, such as applicable skills, success habits, and health and wellness.
- Most institutions can’t really define their priorities because they have too many. But they have to.
- Innovation in schools is nobody’s business.
Therefore, as schools rush to reopen, we need to take significant time to understand what we have learned from the challenges the pandemic is inflicting on us.
where did we innovate? where did you adapt? where did we thrive? Where has the pandemic revealed long-hidden issues? Has it shed light on the challenges that have arisen as the world shifts to remote and hybrid work?
More importantly, how can these insights be gleaned, solidified, and put into action?
Horn’s prescription is so simple that everyone might overlook it. He wants institutions to create “autonomous opportunity units.”
what is that? The basic idea is that giving a small team of educational decision makers the ability to innovate and giving them autonomy (separating them far enough from the main organization so as not to incorporate their thoughts and actions) The fact is that it is the first catalyst that matters. Makes everything else possible.
Once that’s done, Horn has some concrete ideas for what the innovation team should do.
- Switch to learning-based learning.
- Stop categorizing students by grades and scores and instead support them on their own journey of mastering concepts and skills. Counterintuitively, this doesn’t mean less ratings, it just means using ratings to create better data and using that data to make better decisions.
- Create a team of educators who specialize, collaborate and work together. In particular, I believe that grading and teaching functions should be entrusted to separate educators. Someone on the education team should be responsible for making sense of all this new data.
- Provide students with timely, actionable, and constructive feedback. This means a radical rethink of grading.
- Integrate parents and families as a core part of organizational design.
- Try microschools, hybrid homeschooling, and collaborative learning with learning hubs and pods.
Horn’s advice is worth reading for anyone interested in the future of education. For professionals involved in making critical decisions about how to move forward from the pandemic, the ideas that come from pouring a few hours into this book will be more than worth the sacrifice during this overwhelming and stressful time. Without innovation, our education system could go back in time, so mastering innovation itself is important right now. Even before the pandemic hit, we knew that the system was not working well for our children and was far from preparing them for their future.
In short, this moment may be your chance to create something better. Or it can make everything worse.
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