Friday, May 15, 2020

Growth Rings: Revisioning School. Letting Go, Look Over the Horizon, and Move Forward

Growth Rings:
Revisioning School, Let Go, Look Over the Horizon, and Move Forward.

“Learning is as natural as breathing when there is a real purpose behind it and when we have the freedom to learn on our own terms when we’re not confined and coerced by external systems and traditions.”

COVID-19 is a significant emotional experience affecting us all. The desire to move beyond the event, reopen the country and restart the economy, even though we are still in the midst of a crisis and with no proven vaccine in sight, reflects on our Nation’s morals, beliefs, and values. The desire to “return to normal” or “the way it was” is just a nostalgic “pipe dream”.  As was illustrated in Spencer Johnson’s book Who Moved My Cheese? The cheese has moved, so we need to go and look for new cheese.

Schools Must Let Go.
With the physical closing of schools for the remainder of the school year, communities, parents, kids, teachers, and administrators have struggled to come to grips with the situation. Following the conversations on Social Media, there has been a massive effort by schools to continue to feed kids and continue to have students ‘learn’?  The concern is how do we keep kids on track? How will they catch them up to where they are supposed to be by grade level?  What will the school be like in the fall?  

The irony is that schools were not built for learning. Research shows that very little of what kids “learn” in a curricular sense is remembered for the long term, nor is it relevant to or applicable in their daily lives. It’s an unpleasant truth that makes us uncomfortable. ...Learning in school simply isn’t like learning in real life.”

When talking with a parent in Illinois this past week, she indicated her 9th-grade son’s school was canceled March 12th.  The grades he had the day school closed would be his grades for the second semester. He did have the option if he wanted to go online and improve his grade if wanted too, so, he did. The kicker being his classmates who already had ‘A’s did not have to do this. Some school districts took the stance if they could not provide online instruction to all students, including Special Education students, they would not provide instruction to any students. 

Many districts have spent cash reserves to purchase computers, internet hot spots or print worksheet packets for those students who do not have internet or a computer. All this to try to keep the “assemble line” of the school moving forward.

COVID-19 Aftershocks for Schools and Public Education.
The aftershocks of COVID-19 will be as great or greater than the initial event. The economy shut down and the loss of tax revenue will financially impact public education and schools. To date, no teacher, administrators, or support staff has been laid off.  This fall might be different.

Factoring in lost tax revenue, flat state funding, along with Districts spending reserve funds to print worksheet packets, procure computers, coupled with online digital tool vendors that have made their products available for free but will start billing for them in the fall, public education, specifically local school boards, are facing a financial crisis. This will result in very hard decisions having to be made.

What are Schools to be? 
The foundational question to be asked is “What are schools and public education supposed to be?” Are schools and public education to continue the previous mission of free child-day care enabling parents to work, developing a student’s moral compass, and civic responsibility while at the same time address their social-emotional learning? Are schools to continue to define the community’s identity on top of addressing the unique and specific needs of all learners?  Interesting to note that with the community now being reframed as both physical and virtual, should a person Zip Code be a limiting, contributing factor for learning?

In a recent conversation with Dr. Lana Israel, creator of Muzology, she lifted up the concept of schools (public education) historically tasked to fill several boxes; the education box, Social / emotional box, moral compass box, and physical (feeding)box.  She suggested that because of COVID-19 and the fear of future shutdowns, Social Distancing and the emergence of online remote working may affect some schools the traditional “boxes”. With remote learning, the Social/emotional box, moral compass box, and physical (feeding) box could be addressed by parents, leaving the academic box to be addressed in some instances by public education? Partnering public, nonprofit and faith-based organizations, new programs and strategies could be designed to address the other boxes by coordinating efforts and leverage resources. This could take responsibilities off the school’s plate.
  
The reality is that the new emerging economy is redefining the world of work. Businesses are discovering that in many cases, having their employees work from home, remotely, has a cost-saving.  The cost savings for business includes parking, offices, and onsite employee benefits (cafeterias, wellness rooms, childcare) with some business finding increases in employee productivity. For the employee working from home, this saves commute time and increases family time. Employees have more control over their workday, what time they work, what they choose to wear, and when they take breaks.  Employees are saving commuting costs and not having to deal with “workplace drama”.   This is but one aspect of the emerging world of work and it is noted does not address those jobs that are not conducive to remote working.

Looking over the Horizon.
There have been calls for schools to change and adapt.  In 1993 then US Secretary of Education Richard Riley stated, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technology, that hasn’t been invented, in order to solve problems that we don’t know are problems yet.”  Now, today, more than ever, we need to embrace and address this in our thinking.  

Looking at the here, now and over the horizon, several themes are emerging and coming into focus.  One is that there is a new normal. COVID-19 has reframed and transformed how mankind interacts with each other and that the problems facing us are not linear, but complex and multi-dimensional.   It is interesting to see how some are trying to leverage technology, applying it to old system thinking, historical perspectives and practices to create solutions for never before seen or experienced challenges.
  
The Michigan State College of Education complied actions being taken by public schools to address the COVID-19 closures and made these recommendations:
·      extend the 2020-21 school year and/or lengthen school days so students can catch up on lost learning time;
·      States and districts should revise tests to assess students’ progress and identify different student learning levels at the start of the 2020-21 school year. These tests should be used to help educators provide targeted assistance to students and should not be used for accountability purposes;
·      States and districts should invest in professional development programs to help teachers and staff instruct returning students at different learning levels;
·      online instruction may not be available or appropriate for all students so states will need to help districts fund alternative forms of distance learning through the mail or phone.

Extending the school day and school year to recapture time for learning and revising assessment test all seems like traditional strategies. Investing in teacher professional development so as to differentiate instruction for learner makes sense, but where to go and who can provide the training?  And, distance learning by telephone or mail indicates worksheet packets, definitely not good. 


It is interesting that the recommendations did not acknowledge the need to deal with the trauma from the school closing or for engaging politically to advocate for Broadband internet build-out. The recommendations seemed to focus on how to teach the same old stuff, the same old way and not on imagination, creativity, or innovation.
Author and futurist Rick Smyre state the need to move from “linear, either-or thinking” to “non-linear, and both thinking.” I translate this to mean we are in chaos as society struggles to let go of 20th-century thinking, embrace reality, and create new systems. During this chaos, to maintain the old system only long enough for new systems to be designed, created, and made operational. We must to continue to fly the old plane while at the same time, inflight, build the new one.

The priority needs to be LEARNING
Learning has always been organic and associated with growth. Historically however we institutionalized learning by applying 20th century industrial assemble line system thinking, creating the current public-school education system. Initially a local controlled, democratically elected board of education, community financial responsibility, that over time has morphed to become dependent on funding and seceding oversight to State and Federal authorities.  Year after year, schools have assumed more responsibilities and asked more from teachers, without providing the necessary funding, support, or training. It’s time to move from the past and design a new model. 

As we move beyond COVID-19 and deal with the aftershocks, the way forward is to apply emerging system thinking and new realities in the redesign of the system of learning.  Where a person works, how they work, and when they work, is changing. This reality will impact schools and should be included in school redesign What we want kids to know and be able to do, how do we know they know it and what do we do if they don’t, is taking on new meaning.  

A valued colleague of mine, Deron Durflinger, once shared with me the thinking that “time needed to be separated from the learning.” He believed that in the current model of school learning was restricted by time, the class period. He advocated that learning should not be defined by a time period but be continuous, uninterrupted, and not be restricted to a physical classroom.  This is an important design feature to be considered.

Move Forward
Letting go of old thinking, discerning what schools are to be and do, designing a new business plan to provide funding to compensate teachers and support learning, focused on teaching students how to access information, think and learn, mankind is experiencing growing pains.

New Growth Rings are being added to our tree of life. 
It’s time to let go, look over the horizon, and move forward.


1 comment:

  1. Good thoughts John, you seem to have your finger on some trends that have been happening in education the last few years, and might be enhanced by our experiences the last couple of months. -Lon

    ReplyDelete