For the past several weeks, finding the best way to operate schools during a pandemic has been at the forefront of a national discussion. Most people agree that it’s a nearly impossible problem to solve, which actually puts it on top of a pile of several other nearly impossible to solve problems education has been facing for generations. That’s okay though, because these problems are only nearly impossible to solve, and not literally impossible. I know this because I thought about them for a little bit this morning, and I think I’ve got everything figured out.
Now, full disclosure: These hypotheticals would cost a LOT of money. There’s no way around that. But didn’t the government just issue stimulus checks like they were Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons this past spring? I’d argue that with the size of our national economy, there’s money available to allocate if education is made a big enough priority (or, in other words, if it finally became the priority it already should be).
So, let’s start with the easy part: How do we get through the 2020-21 school year?
*Accept that 2020-21 is the Covid-19 Year and will be forever marked with an asterisk because of that, which — let’s face it — is already going to happen anyway. We’re in a pandemic. Don’t let the gravity of what that means diminish just because you’ve heard the word so many times in the past six months. There is no true sense of when this will end, or how much worse it will get before it gets any better. It’s a health crisis at a global level. We have to deal with it. So far, our country has come up with some spectacular ways of failing at that.
*Start the school year on October 1st. Go 10 weeks instead of 12 for each trimester this year, to allow for a built-in quarantine stretch between academic terms. Abbreviate the curriculum and eliminate the time used for baseline-establishing standardized testing. Use that extra month up front to give the active teachers time to plan out what needs to happen to make the rest of the year successful. I’m not saying the curricular specialists or the administrators wouldn’t have anything to add, but leaving thousands of teachers out of the planning loop is a waste of talent and creative energy and passion. Give us a rough outline to follow. Give us guiding standards. Then let us start doing the things we do better than anyone else ever could.
*Distance learning for everyone, period. The whole year. Let’s not worry about the time and energy that would need to go into trying to arrange a completely safe hybrid or full return. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than a whole bunch of funerals no one could physically attend. Plus it would take away all the stress related to wondering how each separate district is going to try accommodating their communities every time the Covid data changes a tenth of a percent. Remember — this is the year that’s getting the asterisk anyway. The school buildings could remain open to provide food service for families in need of assistance, and opportunities for students to meet in individual and mitigated settings with social workers, psychologists, speech pathologists, tutors, and whatever other professionals provide necessary services. But traditional classroom teaching? Nope. Just be sure you keep those devices charged.
*Socialization worries? Overlooking the fact that socialization will be nothing at all like what people advocating for a hybrid model are hoping for, the districts can organize properly mitigated activities, perhaps weekly, for student and/or family participation depending on the course of the virus through their communities. Parents who are concerned about their kids seeing their friends can decide whether or not they’ll allow them to attend. Transportation would be provided to make sure everyone can get there.
Okay, there we go — 2020-21, settled. Boom, we’re done. Nothing to it. Let’s move on, because we still have some work to do here. Now, when it comes to solving all the other problems school has:
*All teachers working with students through distance learning this year will be doing so with the maximum student-teacher ratio allowed for that grade level. This will allow hundreds of teachers to step away from their direct teaching responsibilities for the year, and instead begin working on reinventing the education model. They’ll be tasked with developing ways an equitable education can be delivered to each student. Covid-19 isn’t our only problem, folks. Systematic racism. Culturally imbedded sexism and gender biases. Fundamental disadvantages associated with poverty or language differences. The constant pursuit of eliminating the achievement gap. Varying opportunities available not just when comparing different school districts, but sometimes between schools in the same district. Schools have become the hubs of their communities, because they represent cross-sectioned samplings of the problems all of our communities face. Every person in education tries really hard to do the best they can, but too often getting through the school day is like swimming uphill. There must be things we could do better.
So what would a complete reinvention for something like this involve? As it happens, I have a few starting points in mind.
*Keep classes capped at a maximum of twenty students.
*Each grade level or department in each school should have its own administrative assistant, as well as its own paraprofessional to support instruction. (To be fair, I'm stealing this idea from a friend of mine who has advocated for it for at least a decade.)
*The number of social workers staffed at any building should increase by at least five times, because that many are needed. Really. They are. Additionally, Character Education, or whatever it would be called, would be raised to the level of any other academic discipline. Too many members of our society clearly have things to learn about getting along with other people.
*Speaking of curriculum, it would be reimagined from the ground up. The days of trying to accommodate specific numbers of minutes spent on each subject daily while using prepackaged curriculum plans as gospel truth would be over. Curriculum packages would be starting points. One of the biggest jobs those teacher Think Tanks during the Covid year would be reimagining curriculum in ways that would (a) address state standards and (b) efficiently integrate different disciplines into the same learning opportunities.
*All specialists would have adequate space and materials to work with. Media centers would be updated with current fiction and non-fiction titles each academic term.
*Get rid of the agrarian calendar. Instead of giving students a summer break (because it’s not really like a lot of them need to spend their summer helping to work the family farm anymore), give them four three-week breaks between academic periods spread out during the year. This will go far in eliminating the dreaded “summer slide” and the reteaching time needed at the start each new year to make up for it. I know, I'm not crazy about giving up summer breaks either, but we're doing bold thinking here.
*Extend the school day by an hour (and increase staff pay accordingly). Use that extra hour to give the students more time to eat their meals, more time to read, and more time to meet with the psychologists, social workers, and health professionals they need to see. And on the subject of health professionals, each school health office should be staffed full-time by one doctor, one nurse, one dentist, one psychologist, and at least one paraprofessional.
*Each school should be staffed by a minimum number of licensed substitute teachers, ready to step in and take over a classroom when the emergencies happen, because they do. Exactly how many people would be staffed in these positions would depend on the size of the building. If these teachers are not needed as substitutes, they would be available for classroom support or tutoring during their work hours.
*Finally: No more Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for snacks. Those are just wrong.
Okay, so — I think we all know this list barely scratches the surface about what could be done differently to make schools more effective. But I don’t really know if the original premise is that far out of line: This school year isn’t going to be any kind of normal. No solution will be great. We’re all just imperfect human beings moving into this great unknown, hoping we’ll be able to do our best with the unprecedented situation we find ourselves facing. But if there ever was a time to re-evaluate the way we do things, why not take advantage of a time when we kind of have to do that already anyway? It doesn’t hurt to dream. Procedures begin as plans, and plans start as ideas. Without an idea, there's no first step.
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