What we are learning during the pandemic
We have many friends and allies. We are grateful. As we meet the demands of this moment, we appreciate the primacy of relationships, including with our students and families.
Here are some other lessons. As much as our staff (daytime certified teachers) are trying to keep our students current with school work and learning, after-school our students mostly need our checking in with how they are feeling and doing in general. Knowing students well is the foundation of teaching. It’s these relationships that matter most.
Our families and teachers are teaming up to create supportive learning plans for students. There is more input from families and caregivers than ever, because they are more actively involved in learning than ever. In situations in which families are unable to provide support, our educators are stepping in all the more to help and to bridge the home and school learning environments.
There is recognition that we are living through a slow-motion collective trauma. There is also a new openness that our society has resisted before now. Carver is investing more resources and planning into providing social-emotional support that will continue no matter what school looks like in the future to support our students’ well-being. During this pandemic, some students have lost family members or friends; others are experiencing economic instability. Now that students have lived through this, we can’t stop having conversations about these hard things.
Our students are sacrificing their performances, traditions, and celebrations for other members of their communities, and they’re going to see that their actions have helped others live. We can help them understand the connection between their actions and the health of members of their communities. It’s now undeniable that we are all connected to each other, that actions matter, and that we can have a dramatic influence on the health and well-being of others.
We now have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to course-correct, to take what we have experienced and learned and create a vision for education that is more inclusive, responsive, and purposeful than it has ever been.