# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"How to Build a Life" is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.

"If, as it is said to be not unlikely in the near future-the principle of sight is applied to the telephone as well as that of sound, earth will be in truth a paradise, and distance will lose its enchantment by being abolished altogether," the British author Arthur Mee wrote in 1898.

So, fellow Zoomers, how do you like paradise? It turns out that in nirvana, the customary greeting is "I think you're on mute" and your colleagues may or may not be wearing pants.

Zoom and related technologies were necessary during the COVID-19 shutdowns. At a time when more than 40 percent of the U.S. labor force was working full-time from home, videoconferencing arguably saved the economy from much worse collapse. Even as workplaces have opened back up, these technologies have allowed some workers to increase their productivity and given businesspeople options if they want to avoid the appalling state of commercial air travel.
Ed Zitron: Do we really need to meet in person?
But these technologies are not costless in quality of work, or in quality of life. Videochatting may promise the benefits of face-to-face meeting without germs and commuting. But it can provoke burnout for many, and even depression. When it comes to human interaction, it is like junk food: filling and convenient, but no substitute for a healthy diet.
Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
By now, you have no doubt heard of "Zoom fatigue," the range of maladies, including exhaustion and headaches, that are associated with hours and hours of virtual meetings. Survey data from October 2020-when 71 percent of people who could perform their job from home were doing so all or most of the time-revealed that among those using videoconferencing often, more than a third were worn out by it. Not surprisingly, Zoom fatigue rises with frequency and duration of meetings.

Before 2020, very few scholars were focused on the effects of virtual interaction, so research on what Zoom life is doing to us-and why-is in its infancy. One review of the emerging literature in the journal Electronic Markets found that Zoom fatigue has six root causes: asynchronicity of communication (you aren't quite in rhythm with others, especially when connections are imperfect); lack of body language; lack of eye contact; increased self-awareness (you are looking at yourself a lot of the time); interaction with multiple faces (you are focusing on many people at once in a small field of view, which is confusing and unnatural); and multitasking opportunities (you check your email and the news while trying to pay attention to the meeting).
Read: The hidden toll of remote work
Scientists have found that videoconferencing affects many different kinds of brain activity. Among other things, it mutes mirror neurons (which help us understand and empathize with others) and confounds our Global Positioning System neurons (which code our location). In the latter case, virtual interaction creates confusion and burnout by placing the Zoomer simultaneously in one physical space and another-perhaps very distant-virtual space. Think of what happens to your phone battery when it is on Waze trying to figure out where you are. It might feel a lot like what happens to your mental energy when your brain is trying to figure out where you are-and it might help explain why an hour on Zoom can feel like four hours in person.

Although having virtual interactions may be better for well-being than having no social interactions, using video-calling to the point of fatigue has been shown to predict high rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and dissatisfaction with life. Virtual interaction is notably problematic for students, which helps explain the disastrous learning outcomes during the pandemic, especially for at-risk youth. This principle extends to college students: One 2021 study in the journal NeuroRegulation found that almost 94 percent of undergraduates had "moderate to considerable difficulty with online learning."
Thomas Kane: Kids are far, far behind in school
At work, virtual interactions appear to cause two main problems (besides basic unpleasantness): lower performance and suppressed creativity. In a 2021 report in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers who monitored 103 virtual workers' fatigue during meetings found that when workers used their camera (versus having it turned off), they were less engaged during meetings that day and the one after as well. Scholars writing in Nature in 2022 found that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. Virtual work may also lead to more siloing in the workplace as worker networks become more static. I have heard these complaints constantly in my field of academia, which relies on creativity and sharing ideas. As one friend who started teaching at a new university at the beginning of the pandemic told me, "Even after a million faculty meetings on Zoom, I still couldn't pick three of my colleagues out of a police lineup."

The balance of evidence to date suggests that some people suffer a lot more from Zoom fatigue than others, but that for millions it likely deteriorates well-being, and for some-especially young people-this can be catastrophic for learning and mental health. For happiness and productivity, virtual interactions are better than nothing. But in-person interactions are better than virtual ones for life satisfaction, work engagement, and creativity.

Like most things, the right amount of virtual interaction is not zero. But for many of us, the amount we're getting presently is too high. Each of us should think about virtual interaction more or less like nonnutritious food: In a pinch it's okay, but we shouldn't rely on it for regular social sustenance, because it will hurt our health.
Read: We need to stop trying to replicate the life we had
Accordingly, employers, teachers, and friends should use the technologies as judiciously as possible, keeping virtual meetings, classes, and conversations short and to-the-point. And each of us should practice good Zoom hygiene by insisting on boundaries around our use of the technology. When possible, turn off your camera during meetings; use the old-fashioned phone with friends; agree with colleagues before meetings to an absolute, drop-dead end time, ideally after 30 minutes or less. Also, pay attention to the creeping effects of Zoom fatigue, such as burnout and depression, and make sure you have regular breaks from the technology, such as no-Zoom weekends and a complete moratorium during your summer vacation, if you take one. Finally, on your Zoomiest days, program in some time with at least one real live human.

What bothers me the most about video-based technologies is that they make the realest part of life-human interaction-feel fake. If you are a fan of futurism, you know that some would say that such a feeling could be close to the truth of our situation: Many scientists and philosophers have suggested that we all might be living in a simulation of some advanced civilization. As fantastic as it sounds, Scientific American reported in 2020 that the odds of this are probably about 50-50.
Read: You're gonna miss Zoom when it's gone
I don't know how to assess this hypothesis, but I don't want it to be true. I want my life to be "base reality"-my temporal body to be genuine flesh and my soul something that is authentic and eternal. I want happiness and love to be real. This is, I suppose, a philosophical objection to our sudden move into virtual space with one another: Virtual interaction is a simulation of real human life. The images on the screen are not other humans; they are digital icons representing humans in a way that makes me interact with them like fellow humans.

Just as I want to be real, I want you to be as well. I want you to be something more than a two-dimensional pixelated image, assembled from a series of ones and zeroes through cyberspace. So, if it's all the same to you, let's meet in person.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"How to Build a Life " is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Pudding is a digital publication that makes data fun. 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Pudding is a digital publication that makes data fun. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Credit... Oscar Bolton Green

Ms. Laber-Warren leads the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

Thirty percent of workers around the world surveyed last year said they would consider seeking a new job if their current employer required them to return to the office full time. Millennials are especially resistant. In response to the Covid pandemic, PepsiCo, Meta and General Motors, among others, have incorporated remote work into their corporate cultures.

But in a truly flexible workplace, people would control not just where they work but also when. Southwest Airlines allows pilots to choose between morning and evening flight schedules. A few tech companies, including Automattic and DuckDuckGo, have work-anytime policies that enable employees to become nomadic and travel the world or simply run weekday errands. But such opportunities remain rare.

"I think it's really a shame that more companies don't take advantage of it," said Azad Abbasi-Ruby, the senior market research analyst at DuckDuckGo. He added, "We get so much done, and I think a lot of it has to do with this flexibility, letting people work when they're most productive."

Flextime is an employee handbook buzzword, but in practice it is not widely used. Whereas some roles are legitimately time-dependent (teachers need to be at school in the morning), many are not. If more employers truly embraced flexible schedules and allowed employees to work at the times that are best for them, experts say, the benefits would be a healthier and more productive, creative and loyal work force.

There are any number of reasons workers might want more control over when they work. People may live in one time zone and work in another; for example, financial analysts in Seattle or Los Angeles might not want to start their day at 6:30 a.m. to coincide with the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

Or they may have a life situation, such as a disability or caregiving responsibility, that requires attention during standard work hours. Some 700,000 parents of young children left the U.S. work force in 2020, many of them because their children were suddenly schooling from home. Surveys by the Pew Research Center indicate that even before the pandemic, many mothers, in particular, felt that conflicts between work and family obligations had damaged their careers.

Our bodies also would benefit from more flexibility. Each of us has a personalized rhythm known as a chronotype - an internal timer that governs when we naturally fall asleep and when we are most alert. For more than half of adults, biological bedtime falls after midnight, which means that a typical 9-to-5 work schedule throws many of us out of sync.

Our early-bird-gets-the-worm ethic often gets applied to office workers who could do their work just as effectively on their own time. A 2014 study found that supervisors who are early risers perceive employees who arrive later as less conscientious, regardless of job performance. Other studies show that workers are more creative and leaders more charismatic when they are not sleep deprived and when their work and biological sleep schedules align.

Recent pandemic upheavals could open the door for new kinds of workplace flexibility, according to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a technology forecaster and the author of the books " Shorter" and " Rest." "I've interviewed company owners who said, 'In February 2020, work from home was the hill I would die on. I absolutely knew my company could never do it. And my people proved me wrong in three weeks,'" he told me. "What this tells us is that there is no assumption about how we work that should not be open to challenge."

Dr. Pang suggested that employers should think less about time spent working and more about quality. He has identified about 130 employers, including Kickstarter and the government of Iceland, that have adopted a four-day, reduced-hour week without cutting salaries or sacrificing productivity. "The most impressive, most professional person is not the one who needs 80 hours a week to finish the job," he said. "It's the person who can finish it in 30 hours."

With time flexibility, workers could devote their most energetic hours - typically mornings for early risers and afternoons or evenings for night people - to their most intellectually demanding tasks. People could attend their children's sporting events or prepare lunch for an infirm parent. Workers with a chronic illness could absent themselves for an hour or two to manage a mild flare-up without having to take a sick day.

Dawna Ballard, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who focuses on time and work, has a story she likes to tell to illustrate the importance of letting people work on their own schedules. Several years ago, her family got hooked on the delicious eggs with bright orange yolks laid by pasture-raised chickens from a local market. One week, there were no eggs because, she was told, the chickens were molting.

Chickens periodically drop their feathers and regrow them, a process so physiologically demanding that many stop laying until it's over. Industrial farms accelerate molting through starvation, but here was evidence that seemed to suggest that when left to follow their natural cycle, chickens can produce superlative eggs.

Dr. Ballard immediately saw an analogy to people. Though often forced into rigid, standardized routines, we are biological beings whose productivity ebbs and flows not only over the course of a single day but also when weeks of intense labor create the need to recharge.

A few simple tweaks to work culture would make a big difference, Dr. Ballard and others say. Scrap all but the most essential meetings. Don't expect remote workers to be always available or use invasive software to keep them on task. Focus on results and normalize later start times. To foster collaboration among workers who are on different schedules, companies could set limited core hours.

"The chickens, they had the pace that they'd like to go at. We all actually have that," Dr. Ballard said. She added, "Every day, every minute can't be the same."

She said that this may be how machines work. But, she said, "that's not how we work. We break down."

Emily Laber-Warren leads the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
The Times is committed to publishing Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | The 9-to-5 Schedule Should Be the Next Pillar of Work to Fall

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ms. Laber-Warren leads the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Thirty percent of workers around the world surveyed last year said they would consider seeking a new job if their current employer required them to return to the office full time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Will Richardson

At a recent morning workshop for school leaders at a fairly small New England public school district, about an hour into a conversation focused on what they believed about how kids learn best, an assistant superintendent somewhat surprisingly said aloud what many in the room were no doubt feeling.

"When I really try to square what I believe about how kids learn and what we practice in our classrooms, it unsettles me," she said. "And it frustrates me."

As it should.

One of the things I've come to realize in my many discussions with educators from around the globe is that there are a number of practices in our current systems of schooling that "unsettle" us, primarily because they don't comport with what Seymour Papert calls our "stock of intuitive, empathic, common sense knowledge about learning." But what's also notable about those practices is that we rarely want to discuss them aloud, content instead to let them hover silently in the background of our work. We know, as I suggested a few weeks ago, that in many cases, these practices are attempting to do "the wrong thing right" rather than "do the right thing" in the first place. But we carry on regardless.

Acknowledging the Elephants

Lately, I've become increasingly frustrated with our unwillingness to acknowledge these "elephants in the (class)room," if you will, because the new contexts for modern learning forged by the networked world in which we now live are creating an imperative for new ways of thinking about our work in schools. I've been collecting a list of these "things that we don't really want to talk about in education" in hopes that it might challenge us to bring those elephants out into the open and ignite some much needed conversation about how to deal with them. Here are nine of them:

1. We know that most of our students will forget most of the content that they "learn" in school. As Matthew Lieberman from UCLA notes, "For more than 75 years, studies have consistently found that only a small fraction of what is learned in the classroom is retained even a year after learning." That's primarily because the curriculum and classroom work they experience has little or no relevance to students' real lives. And we all know this, because we ourselves have forgotten the vast majority of what we supposedly learned in school. Yet we continue to focus our efforts primarily on content knowledge, as is evidenced by the focus of our assessments. If we would acknowledge that true learning is unforgettable, made of the things that we want to learn more about, we'd radically shift our focus in the classroom. (For more on this, I highly recommend The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith.)

2. We know that most of our students are bored and disengaged in school. According to a recent Gallup survey, only 32% of high school juniors reported that they were "involved and enthusiastic about school." Almost worse, only 17% said that they have fun in school, the same number that said they "get to do what they do best" in school. Is anyone ok with that? And, by the way, let's stop pretending that we can solve the engagement problem by handing kids iPads or other technologies. Hand them more agency over their own learning instead.

3. We know that deep, lasting learning requires conditions that schools and classrooms simply were not built for. When we look at the things that each of us has learned most deeply in our lives, the same certain conditions almost always apply: Among other things, we had an interest and a passion for the topic, we had a real, authentic purpose in learning it, we had agency and choice, deciding what, when, where, and with whom we learned it, and we had fun learning it even if some of it was " hard fun." We know this. But in the vast majority of curriculum driven schools, however, students sit and wait to be told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and how they'll be assessed on it. Rarely do they get to choose, and just as rarely does the learning they do in class have any impact beyond the classroom walls.

4. We know that we're not assessing many of the things that really matter for future success. The reality in K-12 schooling today is that the majority of what we assess, content, knowledge, and basic skills, is the easiest to assess, not the most important. It's much more difficult to assess the literacies, skills, and dispositions that are required to succeed and lead a healthy, happy life, especially in a world where answers are everywhere via the technologies we carry in our pockets. In that world, creativity, curiosity, a change mindset, the ability to create, connect, and participate in networks...all of those are now required, yet few of those are currently assessed at all. As Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab writes*,

"Today's education systems are not designed to help people develop as creative thinkers...It is ironic (and distressing) that at the same time that machines are increasingly taking over workplace tasks that don't require any uniquely human abilities, our education systems continue to push children to think and to act like machines...We need to stop training students for exams that computers can pass."

5. We know that grades, not learning, are the outcomes that students and parents are most interested in. On New Year's Day of this year, high school sophomore Emily Mitchum published an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where she wrote,

This system...has caused my generation to develop an unhealthy obsession over grades instead of learning, in my opinion. The harsh reality is that we really aren't learning as much as we could be. We study because we have tests, and the day after the test we forget all of the information we studied.

Whenever I reference Emily's post to school audiences, most heads nod in acknowledgement. And the same holds true for parent groups. Ask most parents what their child has actually learned as represented by that grade on the report card and you'll get little if any response. (I've tried it.)

6. We know that curriculum is just a guess. The way we talk about "The Curriculum" you would think that it was something delivered on a gold platter from on high. In reality, it was pretty much written by 10 middle-aged white guys (and their primarily white, middle-aged friends) in 1894 called "The Committee of Ten." They were from some of the most prestigious schools and universities at the time, and they fashioned the structure of much of what we still teach in schools today. But we know that much of what every student in 1894 was supposed to learn isn't really what every student in 2015 needs to learn. Yet we seem loathe to mess with the recipe. And as Seymour Papert so famously asks, now that we have access to pretty much all there is to know, "what one-billionth of one percent" are we going to choose to teach in school?

7. We know that separating learning into discrete subjects and time blocks is not the best way to prepare kids for the real world. School is the only place in the world where we do math for 45 minutes, and then science for 45 minutes, and then Shakespeare for 45 minutes. That's an efficiency that serves the system, not the students. To quote Mitch Resnick* again,

"The creative jobs of the future will not fit into boxes as neatly labeled and divided as the professions of today. The positions that involve mastery and the use of powerful technologies will be filled by people who combine a range of different skills from different disciplines. These jobs will require not just interdisciplinary but antidisciplinary thinking and doing."

Does that come as a shock to anyone? And the same goes for separating kids into age groupings, by the way.

8. We know (I think) that the system of education as currently constructed is not adequately preparing kids for what follows if and when they graduate. Take a look at the recent headlines: NAEP scores are down; SAT scores are flat; Americans rank last in problem solving using technology; kids are Internet illiterate; most professors find high school grads unprepared for college or work; and on and on (not to mention the engagement issues mentioned above.) To be sure, there are many causes for this: poverty, declining budgets, lack of technology in schools, etc. And I know that as long as these are the measures we use to gauge our success (test scores, college acceptance, etc.) real change will be hard to come by. But there is a strong argument building that we have reached "peak education" as we continue to do try to do the wrong thing right and get "wronger" in the process.

9. And finally, we know that learning that sticks is usually learned informally, that explicit knowledge accounts for very little of our success in most professions. Instead, tacit knowledge and the ability to learn from others, in the moment, both face to face and in networks is vastly more important and effective. Most of what we teach kids we teach them "just in case" they may need it some day, primarily because the system is still operating on the belief that explicit knowledge is scarce. With the Web, it's not. Those that will flourish in the modern world will be those who can learn what they need to learn "just in time" from a variety of networks and sources and experiences.

What other elephants can you name?

Acknowledging these "elephants" should be unsettling. Our current practice and systems in school don't hew to these truths very much if at all, and that should leave us wondering about how effective our schools actually are at preparing our kids for their real lives. But we can do something about it. We can acknowledge the gaps between what we know to be true about learning and what we do in our classrooms, and be willing to at the very least engage in conversations aimed at bridging those gaps for the sake of our kids. And if we put these unsettling truths front and center in our conversations about education, we might just truly transform the learning experience in schools.
(*Use the password "reviewer" to open the pdf.)

Filed Under: The Shifts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should "Unsettle" Us - Will Richardson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At a recent morning workshop for school leaders at a fairly small New England public school district, about an hour into a conversation focused on what they believed about how kids learn best, an assistant superintendent somewhat surprisingly said aloud what many in the room were no doubt feeling.

# data[].attributes.headline
Stop. Breathe. Working in the Digital Age

# data[].attributes.subject
Stop. Breathe. Working in the Digital Age

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we'd get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the boundaries between work and home, the feeling of constantly being behind, lackluster productivity numbers, and, to be fair, reaction GIFs. What went wrong?

Cal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown and the author of books trying to figure that out. At the center of his work is the idea that the technologies billed as offering us more productive, happier, socially rich lives have left us more exhausted, empty and stressed out than ever. He's doing something not enough people do: questioning whether this was all worth it.

My critique of Newport's work has always been that it focuses too much on the individual: Telling someone whose workplace communicates exclusively via Slack and email to be a "digital minimalist" is like telling someone who lives in a candy store to diet. But his 2021 book, "A World Without Email," is all about systems - specifically, the systems that govern how we work. In it, Newport makes a radical argument: We are living through a massive, rolling failure of markets and firms to rethink work for the digital age. But that can change. We can change it.

This conversation with Newport was originally recorded in March of 2021, but it's just as relevant today as ever.

Recommendations:

"Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford

"Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change" by Neil Postman

"A Continuous Shape" (video)

"Andrew Henry's Meadow" by Doris Burn

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

"The Ezra Klein Show" is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
best of: stop. breathe. we can’t keep working like this.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎The Ezra Klein Show: Best Of: Stop. Breathe. We Can't Keep Working Like This. on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we'd get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the boundaries between work and home, the feeling of constantly being behind, lackluster productivity numb...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
XanEdu K-12 Leader Pulse Survey EdElements Whitepaper_20220121

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are at a hinge moment in the history of our schools. A 120-year-old industrial structure is radically ill-equipped for the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, much less what has been called the triple pandemic of COVID, racism and economic inequality, and fundamental threats to our democracy. We have been trying to carry on as usual, but it isn't working. Mental health crises among students are way up, as are disciplinary referrals, and teachers are now fleeing the profession in large numbers. And these are just surface-level symptoms of much deeper underlying problems. Our present situation calls for flexibility, relationship-building, and deep engagement with the broader world, but our school systems are bureaucratic, transactional, and insular. The problem is not the people - teachers are working heroically, and students are persevering under highly adverse circumstances. The problem is that they are working within a structure that is working against them.

There is a better way. After nearly two decades of attempts to standardize schools, education leaders across the United States are coming to recognize the limits of Newtonian command-and-control models of school reform and becoming increasingly aware of the need to embrace a more complex, humane, and diverse future. Movements for equity and social justice have shaken foundational assumptions about the nature of our schools and pushed us to rethink many of our familiar policies and practices. The sciences of learning have become much more interdisciplinary, offering richer portraits of who our students are, how they construct knowledge, and how cultural and social experiences shape their understandings. And, finally, we now have many models that show us what new and better forms of education can look like in practice, as youth development organizations, schools, and districts adopt more forward-looking visions of teaching and learning. No doubt, progress will be patchy, more evolution than revolution. But we can already glimpse what the future of schooling might look like.

Why a new grammar?

In 1994, David Tyack, William Tobin, and Larry Cuban (Tyack & Cuban, 1995) coined the term "the grammar of schooling" to describe the almost invisible architecture that organizes much of what goes on in education. Among these elements are the separation of classes by academic discipline, age-graded classrooms (and the "batch processing" of student cohorts), teaching as transmission, leveling and tracking, and schooling as a mechanism for sorting students by perceived ability. This grammar reinforces the dominant culture, excludes the perspectives of non-dominant groups, and serves as a means of reproducing social inequalities from one generation to the next.

No doubt, progress will be patchy, more evolution than revolution. But we can already glimpse what the future of schooling might look like.

This grammar was designed more for efficiency and control than for learning or liberation. It is congruent with the Taylorist management philosophy emphasizing standardization that also was born at the beginning of the 20th century. The system was grounded in a gendered division of labor - equipped with the latest ideas in organizational management, a small number of male superintendents could oversee a much larger group of (mostly) female teachers, who would handle the lowly work of pedagogy. It also reinforced dominant racial hierarchies, as it asked everyone who was not white and privileged to accommodate themselves to middle-class white norms. Angela Valenzuela (2010), who studied Mexican American students in Texas, described this process as "subtractive schooling," in that it required students to shed their heritage to participate in school.

If the future of preK-12 education is going to be significantly better than the past, then we need to replace this entrenched grammar of schooling with an approach that values teaching and learning more than control, liberation more than colonization, sustainable approaches more than quick fixes, and human relationships more than bureaucratic rules.

What might be the foundational pillars of a new approach? I suggest three: 1) learners whose agency is respected, whose diversity is embraced, whose selves are deeply known, whose joy is cultivated, and whose holistic growth is the paramount concern; 2) learning that is purposeful, authentic, and connected to the broader human domains of which those learners are part; 3) learning communities that enable deep relationships, cultivate democratic values and dispositions, and model the kind of society and environment we want to create.

For learners: A new social contract

The existing social contract we have with students reflects the early 20th century context in which it was born. Students are conscripted into school from ages 5 to 16. They learn what we say, when we say it. Teachers dispense pre-formulated knowledge and ask questions to which they already know the answers. Students are rewarded for following directions, giving right answers, and not talking back. Students who don't fit the norm - because they are too slow, too fast, don't speak the dominant language, or resist teacher authority - are defined as problems to be fixed. And while more advantaged students may experience a kinder and gentler version of this model, the core emphasis on adult authority, pre-determined content, and batch-processing remains in place for them, too.

We need a different social contract grounded in the idea that children are curious, capable, interested people, whose personhood needs to be respected and whose interests can be stimulated. Such a contract must start with giving students a clear purpose for their learning, moving from what they are learning to why. Purposes come in many shapes, and developing one is a critical starting point for any journey of consequential learning.

Second, this new social contract must give students a considerable amount of choice and agency over their learning. Choice and agency not only support the personal autonomy of the learner but also make it much more likely that learners will find a meaningful purpose in their learning.

Third, we must embrace the diversity of learners. People come in all shapes and sizes, with different interests, goals, strengths, weaknesses, cultural backgrounds, and much more. As Todd Rose (2016) says, there is no such thing as an average human being. We are all "lumpy" in different ways - schools need to respond to these differences rather than seek to suppress them.

And fourth, we must make students feel known, respected, and loved within their communities.

This very different social contract is both desirable and possible. We already have many examples of what it could look like. Montessori schools give even the youngest children considerable choice and agency over their learning; they also use cross-age grouping to create opportunities for peer learning. Reggio Emilia schools combine a stable philosophy with an emergent curriculum, giving teachers flexibility to adapt to the interests of different groups of learners. Clubs, electives, and extracurriculars embody this alternate grammar, enabling students to explore their interests, demonstrate leadership, participate in authentic work, and learn from peers. International Baccalaureate programs move away from multiple-choice tests, giving students some say over what they study and evaluating their work against rubrics that assess disciplinary thinking skills rather than content knowledge. Some private high schools have moved away from Advanced Placement courses and seven-period days in favor of longer blocks, deeper immersive experiences, and more authentic demonstrations of learning. Alternative high schools frequently embrace the social and emotional aspects of schooling, using advisories and other structures to build the relationships needed to keep struggling students engaged. Many youth development programs are places where students are known and deeply cared for, see clear purpose in their activities, and are treated like producers rather than recipients of knowledge. All of these models seek to embrace the new core essentials of purpose, agency, diversity, and community.

Right now, most of these approaches exist in what Sarah Fine and I (2019) have called the "periphery" of schooling, rather than the core. They happen for young children, or after school, or for seniors, or at alternative or private schools. What would it take to move this periphery into the core?

For learning: A new grammar of schooling

To realize this new social contract, we would need schools to adopt a different "grammar." This grammar needs to be much more flexible, porous, and connected than the current grammar.

These changes would make schooling more aligned with learning. In The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Frank Smith (1998) counterposes two theories of learning: the official one, as enacted in school (go over material, study, test, forget, rinse, repeat) and the unofficial one, as enacted in much of life (stimulate interest, try, fail, try again, get feedback, slowly get better). The latter, apprenticeship-based view of learning is how people learn most consequential things in life: It is how we learn to talk, how we learn most jobs, and how we get better in almost all spheres of human activity.

This apprenticeship theory offers a learner-centered view of motivation: The learner wants to learn how to talk, to cook, to defend a client, or to perform a surgery, and that desire motivates what follows. In addition, there is a clear relationship between parts and wholes - the specific skills being learned and the larger enterprise of which they are part. You practice your pirouettes because you want to be able to dance, you practice your layups because you want to score, you revise your sentences because you want your essay to sing. School, by contrast, has lots of parts with disconnected wholes; the decontextualized nature of learning is a critical reason why so many students are disengaged. One of the biggest goals of remaking the grammar of schooling would be to break down those walls and create more fluid connections between individual subjects and the larger domains of which they are part (For an illustration, see Table 1.)

Relatedly, this new grammar would feature fewer firm boundaries and many more connections. The current grammar is extremely compartmentalized, with students divided into age-graded cohorts, time divided into short blocks, learning divided into subjects, students divided by perceived ability, and schools cordoned off from their communities. A new grammar would bridge these divides, creating connections across subjects, among students, and between schools and the broader world. For example, the Philadelphia Science and Leadership Academy partners with the Franklin Institute, a world-renowned science museum, to have students take "mini-courses" taught by Franklin Institute scholars on a range of scientific topics, as well as use the museum's enormous resources to do hands-on work in different domains. This makes learning exciting and authentic.

Such a grammar would also be much more flexible. Rather than assuming that everything can be learned in 50-minute periods over a semester, we would fit the time and space to the nature of the learning. Many blocks would be longer to create space for in-depth work. Some courses might be shorter but more immersive - a week for a design sprint, or two weeks for a mock trial featuring real-world attorneys. School would serve as home base, but students could spend time in a variety of other settings. For example, the Illinois Math and Science Academy sends students to college laboratories on Wednesday afternoons, giving them opportunities to work alongside, and gradually become, practicing scientists. Cities such as Pittsburgh have built ecosystems that connect learners with nonprofits, arts organizations, businesses, youth development organizations, and more. In this vision, the use of adults would also become more flexible: While there would continue to be certified teachers, we would take much fuller advantage of the array of adults in our communities who have skills, knowledge, and perspectives to offer to young people. In Cowichan, British Columbia, for example, Indigenous elders are paid as paraprofessionals to help students learn Indigenous knowledge and traditions.

A system with more choice, agency, and flexibility needs an assessment system to match. We may be on our way. After the state-test mania that gripped us during the No Child Left Behind years, there is an increasing awareness that we need a wider variety of ways to assess learning. For instance, a number of colleges, including big state systems like the University of California and high-status privates like Harvard, have moved to make the SAT optional. Assessments should be grounded in the process and performance of work in particular domains and should be used primarily as a tool for inquiry rather than a single summative judgment. Exhibitions allow students to show fellow students, parents, and community stakeholders the value of the work they have been doing in school, and portfolios allow students to curate their work, revise their best pieces, and align the way they are being evaluated with the highest standards in their fields. The Mastery Transcript Consortium allows students to move away from conventional grades and represent their competency levels in various domains in the college admissions process. There is no shortage of possibilities for different forms of assessment; what is needed is the will to subtract existing low-level multiple-choice assessments to make room for these thicker ways of evaluating learning.

This new grammar would also allow for a different and richer perspective on equity. Yes, we should try to equalize academic skills across groups, but we should do so in a way that stimulates students' interests in learning, gives them increasing levels of choice and agency, and reflects the diversity of cultures and perspectives in the nation and the world. We've tried doubling down on the factory model of schooling - double blocks of reading and math, test-and-punish strategies, summer school, remediation - and the record is not pretty. The solution is not more of the same. Further, it is the students who are most disconnected from school, who are least engaged and most disillusioned, who need a different approach - one where they are known, where their background and culture is respected, and, perhaps most important, where they get to do meaningful work on topics that they care about.

For learning communities: A new social commitment

Schools are not just places where students learn knowledge and skills; they are also places where they develop values, dispositions, and ways of relating to one another. Every decision we make in schools implicitly or explicitly communicates a set of values. Right now, while we talk as if schools are places where students learn to think critically, collaborate, communicate, and so forth, in practice what they are learning is that schools are places that value individual advancement through grades and tests. We need to develop different kinds of communities, organized around different values, if schools are going to become the kinds of places we need them to become.

Every decision we make in schools implicitly or explicitly communicates a set of values.

And what do we need them to become? The world is not in a good place right now. Our day-to-day existence and our long-term survival are threatened by climate change; infectious disease; economic and racial inequality; and, most of all, our inability to work together as local, national, and global communities to constructively address our problems. As the scholar George Counts (1932) argued during the societal upheaval of the Great Depression, some moments call upon us to challenge our fundamental assumptions about the purposes of education - rather, than expecting our schools to prepare students to fit the social order, we should ask our schools to remake that order. We find ourselves in a similar moment today.

To remake the social order will take a commitment to stewardship - that is, a commitment to take care of something important with which we have been entrusted. In so many ways, we are failing at stewardship today. We are not taking care of our environment, our democracy, or our fellow humans during a pandemic. But we must not only restore what has been lost, but also move forward in ways that build a more equitable, humane, and sustainable world than the one we have inherited.

Schools can help foster this ethic in ways large and small. For example, a school that features authentic, collaborative work more than competition for grades is better suited to supporting these values. When students work with peers, as co-apprentices in a field of interest, they learn implicit lessons about the benefits of mutual help and care, rather than the cutthroat pursuit of individual advancement. Such a commitment is visible in a school like Latitude High in Oakland, California, which treats the Bay Area as its extended classroom, sending students out to investigate social issues like housing affordability and homelessness, and to record a podcast, Oaklore, that describes what they learn. Projects like this bridge the boundaries between schools and their surrounding communities, and they position students as a team of learners and, potentially, change-makers. When schools take seriously the concerns of students, involve them in decision making, and help them understand differing perspectives, they are modeling the democratic virtues that our world so sorely needs.

Schools are not just where we communicate academic content; they are where we raise our young people. Our current grammar of schooling inhibits much of what we want for those young people. Why not create a new structure that is consistent with our highest aspirations?

Note: This series is supported, in part, by the Spencer Foundation.
References
Counts, G. (1932). Dare the schools build a new social order? John Day Company.

Mehta, J. & Fine, S. (2019). In search of deeper learning: The quest to remake the American high school. Harvard University Press.

Rose, T. (2016). The end of average. Harper Collins.

Smith, F. (1998). The book of learning and forgetting. Teachers College Press.

Tyack, D.B. & Cuban, L. (1984, 1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Harvard University Press.

Valenzuela, A. (2010). Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring. Suny Press.

This article appears in the February 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 5, pp. 54-57.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Possible futures: Toward a new grammar of schooling - kappanonline.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We are at a hinge moment in the history of our schools. A 120-year-old industrial structure is radically ill-equipped for the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, much less what has been called the triple pandemic of COVID, racism and economic inequality, and fundamental threats to our democracy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
PDTV: Introduction to Ed Tech Competencies

# data[].attributes.headline
When College Students Direct Their Learning: How a CollegeProfessor Redesigned an Undergraduate Course in Education toIncorporate Self-Directed Learning

# data[].attributes.subject
When College Students Direct Their Learning: How a CollegeProfessor Redesigned an Undergraduate Course in Education toIncorporate Self-Directed Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teachers Are Barely Hanging On. Here’s What They Need. | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hint: It’s not meditation and jeans passes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Teachers Are Barely Hanging On. Here’s What They Need.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COMMENTARY: Rebuilding community: Simpler than it sounds, harder than it looks

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the devastating emotional and mental toll of the pandemic, it is almost unthinkable to imagine asking students to learn to read, play an instrument, or solve algebra equations without first rebuilding a nurturing and safe environment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Rebuilding community: Simpler than it sounds, harder than it looks

# data[].attributes.headline
Stanford study finds why writing a letter to a teacher can turn around the lives of some students: Formerly incarcerated students were less than half as likely to return to jail after they wrote to https://edsource.org/2021/for-some-students-simply-writing-a-letter-to-a-teacher-can-turn-their-lives-around-study-finds/662588their teachers.

# data[].attributes.subject
Stanford study finds why writing a letter to a teacher can turn around the lives of some students: Formerly incarcerated students were less than half as likely to return to jail after they wrote to https://edsource.org/2021/for-some-students-simply-writing-a-letter-to-a-teacher-can-turn-their-lives-around-study-finds/662588their teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Photo by Julie Leopo/EdSource

Formerly incarcerated students who wrote letters to their teachers - describing their hopes and dreams, asking for a second chance - were less than half as likely as their peers to return to jail, a Stanford University study found.

Researchers spent two years working with about 50 students in Oakland Unified who had spent time in the county's juvenile justice system and had recently returned to their regular schools. Researchers asked the students to write personal letters to their teachers. Half the letters were delivered to the teachers, and half were not. The recidivism rate among students whose letters were delivered was 29%. For students whose teachers did not see the letters, 69% ended up back in jail.

"The letters helped teachers see beyond the stereotype. These were individual children in difficult circumstances who were asking an adult for help," said Gregory Walton, associate professor of psychology at Stanford. "Ultimately, it's all about love."

The research underscores the importance of strong relationships between students and teachers, which can benefit students of all backgrounds but is especially crucial for those who've spent time in the juvenile justice system, Walton said. Those students tend to feel isolated and stigmatized, and many experienced trauma in their younger years.

Students in the letter-writing group also had fewer discipline issues, the study found.

In their letters, students addressed their goals, what they need help with, and what they'd like their teacher to know about them. Responses included:
"(I'd like the teacher to know) I'm a good kid and likes to learn new things and like to have fun and I like talkin alot." "I do work & it good quality it just that I have a problem with being consistent so I need help & my grades are important." "I'm a smart person when it comes to math but I haven't really been to school so it's kinda hard to focus." "I would want her to know that my only goal in school is too build positive relationships & just to show everyone that I try my best & that I would try on my own before I ask for help." "I need more 1 on 1 time with the teacher because I don't learn as fast as other kids."
The results of the study were no surprise to Hattie Tate, an administrator in Oakland Unified who co-authored the study and leads the district's transition program for students leaving the juvenile justice center. She'd been practicing similar techniques in Oakland schools for decades and had seen countless students turn their lives around.

"Having an adult who believes in them, who wants them to succeed, can change their whole attitude about learning," Tate said. "It creates a sense of belonging at school. That's not something they're used to, and they just thrive when they feel it."

Tate typically starts each semester with a "welcome circle," where students sit in a circle with their teachers and talk about their goals. Throughout the school year, teachers spend plenty of one-on-one time with students to get to know them personally and check in on their well-being daily.

She focuses on five tenets: self-awareness, self-control, social awareness, building relationships and making responsible decisions. Apologies and forgiveness are also part of the daily routine.

Although they lack the credits to apply for California's public universities, Tate's students often graduate from high school, enroll in trade school or community college and sometimes transfer to four-year universities. At least one of her former students graduated from UC Berkeley.

"Anyone who's been successful in life has had adults who've inspired, motivated, pushed them," Tate said. "These students are no different. By having these strong relationships, they learn that they can be successful in spite of whatever trauma they've gone through. It's like, 'Wow, someone believes in me.' "

"I'm a smart person when it comes to math but I haven't really been to school so it's kinda hard to focus," wrote one student in a letter to a teacher.

One of Tate's former students, Juan Campos, said that approach saved him from becoming entangled in gang life or worse when he was a high school student in Oakland in the late 1990s. He had moved from Mexico to California at age 8 with his family, and he struggled to find stability. The family moved a lot, his parents worked almost constantly, and school was not a priority, he said. Becoming involved in gangs, like many of his friends were, seemed inevitable.

"Fortunately for me, my gym teacher, my English teacher, and Ms. Tate believed in me," Campos said. "They saw something in me, and they pushed me. I feel incredible gratitude for that."

Campos' English teacher visited Campos' home and talked to his parents about why their son should go to college. Without that personal plea, Campos' parents never would have understood the importance of higher education or that their son could attain that kind of academic success, Campos said.

Campos went on to Laney Community College in Oakland and California State East Bay, graduating with a degree in psychology. He now works as a case manager at an Oakland nonprofit that focuses on youth violence prevention. Every day, he works with young people who are experiencing the same struggles he faced.

"I know, from my own life, the importance of good adult role models and strong relationships. It's absolutely crucial," he said. "I would not be where I am right now if those teachers had not believed in me. Now I try to provide that for my clients."

For Michael Harris, a senior director of the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, which participated in the study, the most important part of the Stanford study was what it revealed about teachers' biases. Even teachers who were well-intentioned tended to disregard the potential of students who had been incarcerated - at least at first, he noted. It took a personal letter from those students to change teachers' minds.

"There are stereotypes that exist among educators, but this study tells us that it's not the end of the road. Those biases can be overcome, and those teachers can still form strong, positive relationships with their students," Harris said.

He also noted how little it took to change students' trajectory.

"It's a very low-cost intervention. We're talking about a letter to a teacher," Harris said. "But what incredible results."

While the letter-writing is important, day-to-day positive interactions with adults is also key, said Y'Anad Burrell, executive director of Youth Uprising, an East Oakland nonprofit youth center that helped with the research. Efforts to improve students' lives must be consistent and predictable, so students know that school is a reliably safe place, she said.

"This daily repetitive positive influence in students' lives keeps them away from engaging in activities that will push them back into the criminal justice system," she said.

The study, published by the Association for Psychological Science, also outlined other ways teachers can make students feel welcome in class. Researchers from UC Berkeley, University of Michigan and Ohio State, along with staff from Oakland Unified, helped with the study, which Walton plans to expand to San Francisco Unified and Sacramento City Unified.

Walton acknowledged that despite the positive results, nearly 30% of the students in the study did return to jail, some as soon as the next semester.

"It's not a panacea. There's no cure-all," Walton said. "The question is, how do we make progress?"
To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stanford study finds why writing a letter to a teacher can turn around the lives of some students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Photo by Julie Leopo/EdSource Formerly incarcerated students who wrote letters to their teachers - describing their hopes and dreams, asking for a second chance - were less than half as likely as their peers to return to jail, a Stanford University study found.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the risk of Covid-19 for kids compares to other dangers - Vox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children are at much lower risk of Covid-19 than adults. But what does that actually mean?

# data[].attributes.body
https://edsource.org/podcast/could-juvenile-detention-centers-look-like-college-campuses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Could juvenile detention centers look like college campuses?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Could juvenile detention facilities look more like college campuses, with the same opportunities provided?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Could juvenile detention centers look like college campuses?

# data[].attributes.body
Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we age. And it’s worsened by an intellectual and economic culture that prizes efficiency and dismisses play.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | Why Adults Lose the ‘Beginner’s Mind’ (Published 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The psychologist Alison Gopnik and Ezra Klein discuss what children can teach adults about learning, consciousness and play.

# data[].attributes.body
Implications for SEL and Classrooms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Masks Are Changing How Kids Interact - The Atlantic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some kids are struggling to recognize each other through masks-but schools and parents can teach them other skills to compensate.

# data[].attributes.headline
Beyond Crises: The Reawakening of Classrooms

# data[].attributes.subject
Beyond Crises: The Reawakening of Classrooms

# data[].attributes.body
Forward-looking article focused on the positive (potential) impacts of pandemic learning, centered on multingual learners but really broad lessons relevant to most students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's summer 2021 and as educators, we might be thinking beyond crises and concentrating on the extent to which the transformation of our practices of the recent past will have a lasting impact on teaching and learning. As our classrooms reawaken, having a schoolwide plan or a theory of action (a hypothesis that projects what will happen when educators agree to implement a set of evidence-centered strategies) will be helpful in tackling the web of educational inequities that still exists. After all, it is our vision to have our multilingual learners and other minoritized students thrive this upcoming school year. So where do we begin, and how do we achieve our collective goal?

In reimagining educational life beyond crises, this article attempts to treat some issues we face at the classroom level and offer ideas for renewal. The most pressing of these concerns revolves around co-constructing classrooms with multilingual learners to be more linguistically and culturally sustainable and, in doing so, connecting more closely to our families and communities. Divided into three parts, this article

1) looks retrospectively at where we have been,

2) shares insights into what we have gained, and lastly

3) explores how we can leverage these gains to increase the vitality and equity in our classrooms. It's hard to imagine what this upcoming school year will bring, so let's make a pact to maintain a strengths-based focus and an optimistic outlook.

Where We Have Been
No one has to remind us of what we have endured physically and psychologically over the last year and a half-a most overwhelming, perplexing, and challenging of times here and around the globe. Simultaneous crises during this period have been felt hard in the U.S., in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest, failed immigration policy, and natural disasters. This upheaval to life as we have known it has exacerbated the inequities already present and continues to do so. Now as an educational community, we have the opportunity to help right some of these societal wrongs so that we can heal and flourish together. Yet questions remain for us to examine, such as:

What will be the aftermath of the trauma, stress, and anxiety of the crises on our students, families, and colleagues? In particular, how have these crises affected multilingual learners' language, conceptual, and social-emotional development?
What will be the residual effects of ongoing racial injustices on our schools and local communities? What can we do to mitigate discrimination so that our students can build positive self-images and relationships?

How will we provide for unaccompanied minors and other recent arrivals who have escaped from atrocities in their homelands? How might we better coordinate educational and social services for these students?

How will we ensure digital literacy for all students and embed it into curriculum, instruction, and assessment? How do multiliteracies become an accepted reality of classrooms, schools, and the digital world in which we live?

As we ponder how to confront these ongoing dilemmas, we begin to shape a new way of schooling. At the same time, we draw from the students' and families' strengths to optimize opportunities and access for multilingual learners to grow cognitively, linguistically, and social-emotionally. Let's look into our classrooms to see how we might tackle some of these issues and which strategies might be most effective.

What We Have Gained
With months of experience in remote, face-to-face, and/or hybrid modes of learning, teachers and administrators have proven that they can pivot on a moment's notice to a new learning environment. In order to have a most productive upcoming year, let's explore some of the advances we have made and how we might ingrain some of these more constructive aspects into school life. Even though the pandemic has highlighted pre-existing inequities facing our multilingual learners, in some ways it has shone a bright light on our minoritized communities. In doing so, COVID and the other crises have underscored the need to redouble our efforts to ensure that learning opportunities convert into learning gains for our multilingual learners and to continue our vital work in communities.

Several positive residual effects of remote learning are emerging. Digital dependence has helped lessen pre-existing technology discrepancies in some districts. Educators have explored social-emotional supports with heightened attention to students' and families' mental health. Family members have transformed into stronger collaborators in their children's learning. The pandemic has made it clear that learning occurs inside and outside of classroom walls. Leveraging such changes has begun to build educator awareness of how to address the inequities at hand, with hope for encouraging results in the long run.
The following six areas highlight some of the strides that we have made over the last year and a half as an educational community as a whole and for individual schools and classrooms.

Heightened attention to communication
Communication-the exchange of information between educational stakeholders, including students and students, teachers and students, teachers and families, students and families, and schools and families-has markedly increased. Remote and hybrid learning have been a stimulus for more individual contact among these people vested in education. Teachers have redoubled their efforts to communicate with families of multilingual learners in the languages with which family members are most comfortable to check on the academic progress and well-being of their students. These improved communication channels have resulted in relationship building and growing trust between educators and families of multilingual learners.

Improved access to technology
Equipping multilingual learners with technology devices may have been a far-reaching educational goal, but the pandemic accelerated district and school priorities in funding, distributing, and maintaining working tablets and computers. Coupled with this effort have been expanding families' access to bandwidth, improving reliability of internet service, and even increasing the availability of hotspots for students. The importance of digital literacy stemming from the interaction of literacy and technology has come to the forefront. As a result, in some districts, students and families have become more adept at using and integrating information obtained from multiple technology-related sources (including videos, computer programs, and e-books) and in constructing digitally driven products (as in multimedia projects, interviews, and iMovies).

Stronger family-school-community ties
The crises have brought us together as co-dependent and interconnected human beings. The outreach that has occurred to ensure that students and families receive necessary social and health services has created a closer bond. The ingenuity of schools, classrooms, and communities in stimulating learning in multiple languages and in nontraditional ways has spurred thought and action. Online parent academies have popped up, for example, and family members have come to see school as a welcome resource. Having the classroom extend to families (e.g., learning-by-doing daily activities, sharing objects and cultural artifacts, exchanging recipes) has stimulated student engagement and the connection between home and school.

Increased collaboration
Principals and other administrators have become aware of the challenges of teachers during times of crises. Teachers, in turn, have become more sensitive and responsive to the life circumstances of their multilingual learners and their families. Families have become more apt to reach out to teachers and schools, seek resources, and share their histories. Multilingual learners have been building new interactive skill sets with their peers. Collaboration among stakeholders (one of the "big ideas" of the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition) helps promote a common vision and commitment of all educators to educational equity. In essence, increased collaboration underscores the social nature of learning and contributes to the humanization of education.

Expansion of curriculum
We have come to recognize important shifts in curriculum that stem from family, teacher, and student voices in support of linguistically and culturally sustainable classrooms and schools. Family members have contributed their expertise and "funds of knowledge," all of which have made curriculum more authentic, community-based, and experientially relevant for students. Teachers have become empowered in shaping multilingual learners' learning experiences around the students' interests and likenesses. In turn, students have been encouraged to become agents of their own learning. Student voice and choice as part of assessment-embedded curriculum- from helping to craft learning targets to choosing evidence of learning-has come to incorporate multilingual perspectives (Gottlieb, 2021).

Enhanced understanding of linguistic and cultural assets
Finally, we have been making strides as educators in acting on the strengths of multilingualism and multiculturalism and utilizing these assets as a springboard to help shape positive identities of our multilingual learners. In accepting and promoting multilingual learners' strategic use of multiple languages inside and outside of school, we can more realistically represent their lives, ways of being, and interaction with others. In better understanding the intersectionality of the multitude of mosaic pieces that constitute our multicultural society, we are better equipped to combat hate, bias, and discrimination. Shaping the identities of families, teachers, and students in educational contexts, as shown in the figure, has become an outgrowth of linguistically and culturally sustainable schools.

Shaping Educational Identity
Adapted from Zacarian, Calderón, and Gottlieb, 2021, p. 202
How We Can Leverage Our Gains
Having made strides in fortifying relationships among communities, schools, and classrooms, we now turn to what teachers can do every day to ensure the steady academic progress of multilingual learners, offer safe spaces for their social and emotional development, and empower students to become autonomous learners.

Adopt effective evidence-based strategies inclusive of multilingual learners
One might ask which evidence-based instructional strategies highlight what multilingual learners can do and how these students can meet grade-level expectations through effective scaffolded learning experiences. There is no one right answer to this question, as teachers work in many different settings with variability in geography (urban, suburban, or rural settings), demography (high, medium, or low concentrations of minoritized students), and instructional models/programs (dual language immersion, bilingual, and English language development). Here are some ideas for filling an instructional toolbox for multilingual learners.
Enact project-based learning that requires students to probe deeply using the languages of their choice, whether the final product is in English or not.

Integrate interpretive (listening, reading, and viewing) and expressive (speaking, writing, and representing) modes of communication and apply various interactive techniques (such as restorative circles, interactive round tables, Socratic seminars, and courageous conversations).

Use software that stimulates student engagement in learning (such as Flipgrid, Padlet, and Seesaw, among others) and inspires students to use their own and collective creativity with peers in coding to designing software.

Encourage multilingual learners' access to learning in multimodal ways, namely graphically (e.g., graphic organizers and stories), visually (e.g., murals, videos, multimedia presentations), kinesthetically (e.g., re-enactments, dance), and auditorily (e.g., podcasts, audio books) in addition to more traditional print-dependent modes.

Offer opportunities for students to share their personal experiences, cultures, and languages (e.g., through journals, memoirs, autobiographic videos, and murals) as a springboard to further personalize their learning.

Foster engagement of multilingual learners in making decisions
Crises tend to draw everyone closer together through shared experience. We realize now that school as we have known it is forever changed. Let's seize the moment and take time to listen to our students and be responsive to their feelings, needs, and aspirations. Let multilingual learners help shape their own destinies and identities as teachers guide students using these strategies.
Nurture students' confidence and independence by offering multilingual learners more opportunities to interact with their peers in a variety of situations on a variety of topics.

Empathize and be compassionate while giving greater responsibility to students to own their data and show evidence of learning.
Ensure that multilingual learners have opportunities to achieve grade-level expectations as they collaborate in whole-class, small-group, and paired activities where they have options in accessing content (e.g., through visual, graphic, oral, or written representation).

Promote interaction among multilingual learners in one or more languages, including academic conversations on topics/themes of personal interest.

Dedicate time for student self-reflection and self-assessment on what they learn, how they learn, and how they react to their learning.

Invite students to take the lead in providing evidence of learning, such as in student-led conferences or teacher-student dialog.
Build on students' prior knowledge and experiences, their linguistic and cultural assets, and the expertise of families to connect the known to the unknown as a preview to introducing new concepts.
Extend learning outside the classroom, such as by inviting students to participate in outdoor activities, internships, fieldwork, after-school programs, and clubs (e.g., coding, entrepreneurships).

This past year and a half has been extraordinary for educators (and all of us) in every sense of the word. We commend the incredible efforts of teachers and educational leaders who have shown remarkable flexibility in adapting to new teaching methods while being dedicated to the well-being of students and their families. With a new school year upon us, we must strive to ensure that our communities, schools, and classrooms remain interconnected and the relationships we have established strengthen over time. As we forge ahead in our staunch advocacy efforts, let's make a pledge to be catalysts for change in overcoming the linguistic and cultural inequities that still abound.

References
Gottlieb, M. (2021). Classroom Assessment in Multiple Languages: A Handbook for Teachers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
WIDA (2020). WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition: Kindergarten-Grade 12. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Zacarian, D., Calderón, M., and Gottlieb, M. (2021). Beyond Crises: Overcoming Linguistic and Cultural Inequities in Communities, Schools, and Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Margo Gottlieb, PhD, WIDA's co-founder and lead developer, has authored or co-authored over 40 books, manuals, and monographs devoted to the education of multilingual learners. Her efficacy and advocacy efforts domestically and worldwide center on bringing equity to standards, assessment, and curriculum. She can be contacted at [email protected]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Beyond Crises: The Reawakening of Classrooms - Language Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's summer 2021 and as educators, we might be thinking beyond crises and concentrating on the extent to which the transformation of our practices of the recent past will have a lasting impact on teaching and learning. As our classrooms reawaken, having a schoolwide plan or a theory of action (a hypothesis that projects what [...]

# data[].attributes.headline
The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year

# data[].attributes.subject
The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Esteves, N., Buttimer, C. J., Faruqi, F., Soukab, A., Fourkiller, R., Gutierrez, H., & Reich, J. (2021, September 21). The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/h8gac

Esteves, Natasha, et al. "The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the Covid-impacted 2020-21 School Year." EdArXiv, 21 Sept. 2021. Web.

Esteves, Natasha, Christopher J. Buttimer, Farah Faruqi, Aïcha Soukab, Raelee Fourkiller, Harley Gutierrez, and Justin Reich. 2021. "The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the Covid-impacted 2020-21 School Year." EdArXiv. September 21. doi:10.35542/osf.io/h8gac.
Get more citations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To develop an in-depth, nuanced understanding of what teaching was like during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 academic school year, we interviewed 57 U.S. PK-12 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
VOICE AND CHOICE

The teachers need to set some parameters so the students can create and discover with in.

WHAT PBL IS

This is a good introduction to what Project Based Learning is.

WHAT PBL IS NOT

This is my first animation, I was a little angry with some co-workes who were not getting the picture, so I drew it for them.

AUTHENTIC EDUCATION

Examples of authentic classroom projects.

REFLECTION PROJECT

This is the way I self evaluate my projects. This is advanced PBL practice. However you will never really do authentic PBL without a Reflection Project.

@ High Tech High

At High Tech High we are like Sisyphus, always rolling the ball up hill, trying to make a better school and keeping it that way. This animation I hope will help teachers become and stay more progressive. Director's Cut

TEXTBOOK ME NOT

Teaching at High Tech High without text books necessitates significant planning.

INDIAN HEAD NICKEL

The secret of life, parenting, relationships, teaching, working and happiness. It's all here and it's free!

REAL STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Try something, critique and then revise.

WHY PBL

Not everyone learns the same way, teachers should develop projects that have more than one entry point.

PING-PONG COLLABORATION

One way to collaborate, the students bring the same work from one class to another.

NOTICE AND CONNECT

How I come up with project ideas.

COVER YOUR ASS

Narrated by my son, when he was 10. It is a wake up call to the teachers that think the kids don't know you a phoning it in.

COMMON CORE

Common Core is not political, it is doing authentic work with your students.

HOW TO BE A PROGRESSIVE
EDUCATOR

Why being a progressive is not the same as being a Progressive Teacher.

POJECT BASED LEARNING
VS
PROJECT ORIENTED LEARNING

PLANNING AND LETTING GO

If the teacher plans then they a more apt to let the students try their own path.

HOW TO SCHEDULE PBL

How to schedule integrated PBL, remember change the sec dual and you will change behaviors.

PEANUT BUTTER CUP COLLABORATION

This is another form of collaboration, in each lass the students work on different aspects of the same project and then bring them to gather, two great pice of work made into one

CURATION IS ART

How to curate your space and school. Become an expert in 2 minutes. (Just Kidding) Learn what not to do in 2 minutes.

WHAT KIND OF TEACHER

I made this in desperation. I was getting a lot of push back from students and was not being supported by my administrators. I thought I would better off just paining. Everyone has doubts. I made an animation about it.

4 Integrations of HTH

Larry Rosenstock talks about the 4 integrations we have at High Tech High

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Making and doing is better than writing dreams on post-it notes.

VOICE AND CHOICE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The teachers need to set some parameters so the students can create and discover with in. This is a good introduction to what Project Based Learning is. This is my first animation, I was a little angry with some co-workes who were not getting the picture, so I drew it for them.

# data[].attributes.body
The "Educator Toolkit" under resources provides a great model for teacher learning that can be done asynchronously. There is a teacher toolkit (which contains grade level resources) an interactive challenge and a youtube video that explains it all!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The My Name, My Identity Campaign promotes awareness of valuing students' cultures and languages by learning about their stories, unique names and proper pronunciations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Teachers should have a say in how they'll meet learning goals, and schools need a clear way to determine that these goals are being met.

One thing that is certain in our uncertain world is that there will always be change, and as educators, we need to strive to continuously improve in our practice. Yet, with our busy schedules, how do we make this happen? Enter the saying, "Work smarter, not harder." We can establish mindsets and habits to redefine adult learning to be more efficient and effective.

While there is no one, perfect recipe for professional learning, we find these mindsets and habits essential for planning high-quality adult learning that empowers educators.

5 Keys to Effective Professional Learning

1. Articulate firm goals: Schools around the world advocate for scope and sequence plans that outline firm goals about what all students should know and be able to do, but sometimes there doesn't seem to be a clear scope and sequence for professional learning. What do all teachers in your school need to know and do? Your educator evaluation rubric may be a great place to start to articulate those goals.

Next, ask your teachers, "What professional learning supports do you need to reach these goals?" Once you have goals articulated, it may be valuable to create a district professional learning calendar that shows which months, meetings, days, etc., will be focused on each of the goals. Having firm goals can also lead to much more effective faculty meetings.

2. Cocreate indicators of success: As you review your goals for professional learning, ask yourself, "What evidence or artifacts do we have to support that this is where we are, and how will we know when we are making progress?" We can't ask teachers to be learner driven and evidence informed if we aren't modeling the same.

For example, if one of your goals is to increase staff ability to understand and implement Universal Design for Learning, what data will you need to see that increase? Some considerations include teacher perception data on surveys, a review of classroom observations of practice, a review of notes from professional learning communities, and student achievement data. To be blunt, seat time in faculty meetings is not an indicator of success. Let's get creative with evidence and focus on deliverables.

3. Provide flexible means: If we want to include all learners in inclusive and equitable learning, we have to foster voice and choice. The same is true in professional learning. Ensure that professional learning is not one-size-fits-all and that experiences are cocreated with teacher voice. Get excited-this is another opportunity to get creative and leverage rethinking.

Perhaps an inquiry-based approach would work. Consider the 3 Ds framework, Discover, Discuss, Demonstrate, which is just as relevant for adults as it is for our students. "Discover" could take the form of prelearning that is asynchronous. Ideally, this allows for tremendous choice on time, place, path, and/or pace. "Discuss" could be synchronous and/or asynchronous. Sometimes concepts are discussed in person, sometimes in an online discussion board or a Flipgrid because synchronous time is too limited and/or more time is needed for thoughtful responses. Cycles of inquiry are not linear, and "demonstrate" is not something that happens at the end. We are demonstrating growth throughout our continuous improvement.

4. Embed social and emotional learning (SEL) for all: We often hear about the importance of SEL in the classroom, but what about the adults? Consider how social and emotional practices can be intentionally and explicitly integrated throughout professional learning in meaningful ways. Welcoming rituals, engaging strategies, and optimistic closures are three practices that don't take a lot of time and can have a big impact. For some examples, see the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning's video " SEL: 3 Signature Practices for Adults."

5. Spiral learning: We don't want any one-hit wonders in professional learning. If the goals are important, articulate how they will spiral throughout the year. For example, in addition to having professional learning events, what is the plan to continue to support goals and measure progress through a variety of faculty meetings, PLCs, educator evaluation, book clubs, instructional rounds, etc.? It will go a long way to share with staff, "This is important, and this is how we are going to prioritize this throughout the year."

Staying focused is critical for efficacy (and avoiding initiative fatigue). As we learn, refine, and reflect, we will certainly iterate and fine-tune, but we can't jump from initiative to initiative and expect any real impact on teaching and learning.

Growing forward, keep this five-dollar word in mind: equifinality. This is the concept of multiple paths having the same effect, leading to a common end state. In other words, we can all arrive at the same destination even though we took different paths to get there. We believe the items above are essential tools to get to your destination, and there are also a variety of paths that will get you and your team there. Said another way, using these powerful mindsets and practices like a compass, we can have firm goals and flexible means to transform professional learning, meeting the needs of all adult learners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Essential Strategies for Planning Effective Professional Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers should have a say in how they'll meet learning goals, and schools need a clear way to determine that these goals are being met. One thing that is certain in our uncertain world is that there will always be change, and as educators, we need to strive to continuously improve in our practice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ISTE Standards are the definitive education technology standards, which provide schools, districts, educators and students with a framework for rethinkin...

# data[].attributes.body
The pandemic likely won’t be an anomaly. How can we shift learning models and build social resources to prepare for future interruptions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The pandemic likely won't be an anomaly. How can we shift learning models and build social resources to prepare for future interruptions?

Credit: JOEBELANGER / iSTOCK

For this year's kindergarten students, this may not be the only global pandemic that they face in their lifetimes. It probably won't be the last time their schooling is interrupted, either. It is terribly sad and unfortunately important to consider that the 2020-2021 school shutdowns may prove to be an important preparation for an uncertain future.

Humans are re-engineering the geochemistry of the planet to be inhospitable to our current civilization. As average temperatures rise and extreme weather events become more common, there will be more fires, more floods, more freezes, more novel disease events, and accompanying migration, civil unrest, and conflict (Reidmiller et al., 2018). The California fires of the past year were the most severe of the last century, but they may prove to be the mildest of the next century. These events will likely force schools to interrupt campus operations more frequently in the decades ahead than in years gone by.

In The Fifth Season, the Afro-futurist and speculative fiction writer N.K. Jemisin (2015) describes a world upended by massive climactic events that end typical seasonal cycles-introducing a fifth season of climatic emergency-and require a reorganization of society. As our planet Earth rapidly accelerates climatic change, educators and citizens need to imagine how we can create more flexible, resilient institutions that serve young people during a tumultuous and challenging period. All communities will be affected differently, but in the spirit of starting to plan for an uncertain future, here are four possible principles for schooling during Earth's possible fifth season.

1. Universal broadband and technology access

Schools in the future will likely close more often, more unpredictably, and for longer periods of time. In the West, fires may make commuting unsafe for days or weeks at a time and may destroy school structures. In historically warm regions, severe freezes like those Texas experienced in 2021 may shut school operations, and in floodplains and along the coasts, new severe flooding may imperil schools.

Because of the pandemic, an entire generation of educators and students now know how to rapidly pivot teaching operations into online formats. The process and pedagogy are still imperfect, but they improved substantially from March 2020 through the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, and online learning can now offer continuity of community and instruction during disruptive periods.

The signature weakness of current online learning models is that millions of young people cannot access them because their homes, apartments, and shelters lack adequate internet access or because they lack access to computing devices. To prepare for future disruptions in the post-pandemic period, we need to revise the social contract to ensure that communities provide all young people and their families with functioning computing devices and sufficient access to the internet-not just in emergencies, but year-round.

Connecting young people and their families to the internet should not be the job of schools. In the 20th century, when we decided as a society that every rural home needed electric lights, we did not ask school superintendents to start hoisting electric poles or wiring homes. Instead, we launched a massive federal electrification effort. In the 21st century, we must treat broadband as a utility rather than a luxury good and develop similar national efforts aimed at universal broadband. Local school leaders can't roll out fiber optic cable to urban housing complexes or remote rural homes. But they can explain clearly to voters and policymakers how vital these connections are for the future of learning. A combination of state and federal agencies must expand home technology access so schools can focus on learning.

2. Pedagogies that are robust to interruption

In the spring of 2020, schools were differently prepared for emergency school closures. Prior to the pandemic, education technology could be considered one reasonable investment for improving schools, but by no means was it definitively the most effective investment for improving student experience and learning. All school investments come with opportunity costs, and putting resources behind high-quality curriculum materials, or career and technical opportunities, or intensive tutoring, etc., could all be considered reasonable alternatives to investing in technology. That said, schools that had invested in technology were, in many cases, far better prepared for emergency remote learning than schools who had to acquire their first learning management system contract in April of 2020.

So smart technology spending is undoubtedly important. But it will also have to work in concert with more innovative instructional frameworks. In the future, as school communities consider different pedagogical investments and approaches, they will have to put greater weight on those that are robust to interruption, approaches that work reasonably well (or comparatively well) if schools need to switch between in-person, hybrid, or fully remote modes of learning.

One pedagogical approach that may prove particularly useful in a more interrupted, uncertain future is competency-based pedagogy, sometimes called mastery learning. Competency-based learning covers a diverse family of approaches, but the main idea is to have schools and educators try to carefully define learning goals and then help students make individualized progress toward those learning goals. In traditional systems, schools often treat time as fixed (in daily 47-minute periods and standardized marking periods) and learning as variable, with some students meeting expectations during the allotted time for a topic and some students falling short. In competency-based systems, by contrast, the goal is to make learning fixed and time variable, so that all students meet or exceed the defined learning objectives, although they may take different amounts of time to be successful. Competency-based approaches put less emphasis on keeping students progressing along the curriculum in lockstep and more on cycles of learning, evaluation, feedback, and remediation or acceleration.

For schools that had zero experience with competency-based learning or mastery grading, the pandemic was a terrible time to introduce completely new ideas to educators. It's hard to replace your grading scheme while you are spooling up new online operations. But schools with some familiarity with these approaches were able to draw on them to help students differentially affected by the pandemic to flexibly adjust to new schedules, new routines, and new expectations.

Key Takeaway

Some approaches to curriculum may prove especially well-suited to an uncertain future with more frequent interruptions, and competency-based learning is a good candidate to be one of them.

There is little evidence to suggest that in typical, pre-pandemic times, schools that used competency-based approaches had student experiences or outcomes that were substantially better than comparison schools (Pane et al., 2017). There are lots of ways to be a good school. But some approaches may prove especially well-suited to an uncertain future with more frequent interruptions, and competency-based learning is a good candidate to be one of them. There are certainly other candidates-place-based education, outdoor learning, community-based education-and as schools plan professional development in the years ahead, they should consider how their improvements in teaching and learning will fare in uncertain times.

3. Teach fewer topics in greater depth

When classes are designed as survey courses that address many topics with relatively little depth, interruptions of even a few days mean that students can miss entire topics. By contrast, when courses and curriculum are designed so that students go into fewer topics in greater depth, teachers have more flexibility in addressing or accommodating interruptions. Students who have some orientation to a topic can pursue independent investigations more effectively. It can be easier to have students continue to prepare for a wide range of assignments, from tests to projects, when they miss pieces of a whole rather than entire curriculum segments.

As it turns out, many of the best schools and systems already pursue this approach of deeper focus anyway. In In Search of Deeper Learning, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine (2019) investigate very different kinds of schools, from project-based learning schools to International Baccalaureate programs to "no excuses" charter schools, and find that for all of their differences, many great schools design curricula that address fewer topics with greater depth. In this case, an approach that may be beneficial in all kinds of societal circumstances might prove particularly beneficial during periods of greater interruption and disruption.

4. Social welfare for children and families

Educators across the country made heroic efforts this past year to ensure that as many students as possible were fed and had access to safe housing, learning technology, laundry facilities, health care, mental health resources, and other social supports. While their efforts were admirable, in a better world they would not have been so nearly alone in providing a social safety net for young children and their families. The pandemic revealed many wrongs and imbalances in our society, but none as starkly and profoundly as the immoral and embarrassing dependency on schools to meet the basic needs of children in an emergency.

A variety of federal, state, and municipal agencies should expand their care of young people and families so that schools can focus on the one area of their specialization, teaching and learning. Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone offers one model for what comprehensive supports for young people and their families might look like, starting from maternal health and early parental education programs and continuing to nutrition and health care resources throughout a child's life. Another model is The Education Redesign Lab, led by Paul Reville at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which has promoted the idea of "Children's Cabinets," where leaders of different municipal departments-from parks to health to budget and finance-regularly come together to consider how their work can better support children and families.

To be prepared for extreme times, we need comprehensive and robust social welfare for children and their families in normal times. That work, by definition, is beyond the scope of schools alone. But school leaders can spark dialogue and build connections across charities, religious institutions, and government agencies to expand supports for youth.

Preparing for Uncertainty

These four principles for schooling in the fifth season-universal technology access, resilient pedagogies, deeper curriculum, and stronger social welfare-may not be the exact four right ones or the only ones we will need. But they are a start. In a world characterized by environmental instability, a climate emergency, and more frequent and severe interruptions, school leaders in the years ahead will have to think more about what kinds of changes need to be made to the institution of schooling so it can continue to offer a safe haven to young people in uncertain times. What must be done to nurture a generation of citizens in period of uncertainty and complexity so they have a chance, ultimately, to correct our planetary imbalances and make a more just, safe, and stable world?

Reflect & Discuss

How was your school or district caught off guard by the pandemic-era interruptions to learning?

How can you better prepare for future interruptions?

How can you be a better advocate for students who may be most affected by interrupted schooling? Think about any practices, policies, or strategies that you or your school started during the pandemic. Which of these would be helpful to keep doing?

References

Jemisin, N. K. (2015). The fifth season. New York: Little, Brown.

Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2019). In search of deeper learning: The quest to remake the American high school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pane, J. F., Steiner, E. D., Baird, M. D., Hamilton, L. S., & Pane, J. D. (2017). Informing progress: Insights on personalized learning implementation and effects. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Reidmiller, D. R., Avery, C. W., Easterling, D. R., Kunkel, K. E., Lewis, K. L. M., Maycock, T. K., et al. (Eds.). (2018). Impacts, risks, and adaptation in the United States: Fourth national climate assessment, volume II. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Want to add your own highlights and notes for this article to access later?

From our issue

ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Sign up for our newsletter

Questions?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For this year's kindergarten students, this may not be the only global pandemic that they face in their lifetimes. It probably won't be the last time their schooling is interrupted, either. It is terribly sad and unfortunately important to consider that the 2020-2021 school shutdowns may prove to be

# data[].attributes.headline
Too Many Standards: Doug Reeves Has Four Answers

# data[].attributes.subject
Too Many Standards: Doug Reeves Has Four Answers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WELL BEFORE the global pandemic caused a wave of school building closures and consequent learning losses, teachers complained there were too many standards for student learning. The problem was that, however well-intentioned and thoughtfully designed, state standards all su!er from the same faulty assumption: Students need only one year of learning. That assumption always has been questionable, but after students in 2020 lost at least six months of learning (and many would argue they lost more), teachers in 2021 are facing students who may be two years or more behind their current grade level. The idea of teaching and assessing three years of learning in a single year is preposterous. Fortunately, some practical solutions are available.
Facing Reality
First, stop the illusion of perfect alignment of curriculum and standards. Curriculum leaders at state and district levels have invested an enormous amount of time in the process of alignment, establishing connections between state standards and the details of curriculum and assessment at each grade level. However elaborate these documents may be, they do not represent the reality of the classroom in which teachers have a limited amount of time to help students catch up in missing essential skills and assess - and reassess - the academic content of the current year. Rather than the coherence that curriculum alignment was intended to provide, teachers are left to make idiosyncratic choices about what they teach, with little regard to standards and curriculum documents. Second, focus assessments on the essentials. The folly of most assessments, from end-of-unit tests to the ubiquitous benchmark assessments and end-of-year tests, is that every standard is equally important. A better approach is for districts to embrace what I have called "power standards," that subset of standards that gives students the knowledge and skills that are most important. My experience with secondary school math teachers nationwide is that they are dealing with students who lack basic skills in number operations, fractions, decimals and measurement. Data from state tests show chronically low levels of math achievement, yet rather than focus on these essentials, many math teachers ignore student deficiencies in the basics and plow through the required curriculum items on the rhombus and trapezoid. These teachers need courageous leaders who will tell them to "punt the rhombus" and focus on the essentials that will help students succeed at the next level of learning.
Stop Accumulation
Third, commit to a "zero-sum" rule on curriculum. For any new curriculum item added, something must be subtracted. For example, some schools are embracing the 1619 Project curriculum based on the work of The New York Times surrounding the introduction of slavery in America. While this may be a worthy endeavor, please don't ask social studies teachers to do this unless you either explicitly remove something else from the curriculum or give them an 11-month school year. Fourth, recognize there is more to student success than academic content standards. Many students have been traumatized by illnesses and deaths of loved ones and the isolation from friends associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It's hard to focus on prepositional phrases, the map of South America and the quadratic equation when you are not physically and emotionally safe. The process of establishing standards, from the Common Core to those adopted by individual states, is a political one and often a process of accumulation, with different stakeholders demanding that the standards include "what every child should know." Because there is no constituency favoring a reduction in academic content, it is up to education leaders at the local level - superintendents, curriculum directors and teacher-leaders - to say what we all know to be true: There are too many learning standards. Teachers are depending on you to tell them what's most important.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Too Many Standards? My Four Answers - Creative Leadership Solutions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WELL BEFORE the global pandemic caused a wave of school building closures and consequent learning losses, teachers complained there were too many standards for student learning. The problem was that, however well-intentioned and thoughtfully designed, state standards all su!er from the same faulty a

# data[].attributes.body
"But the real crisis of our times, of my generation, is not that we don’t have it good, or even that we might be worse off later on. No, the real crisis is that we can’t come up with anything better."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell...To the extent that bookish economic historians can rampage, Bregman is on one...He combines a detailed approach to economic policy with a utopian vision of a better future...Bregman argues that it is only by dreaming about what seems to be unachievable that society can make good things possible."―Patrick Kingsley, New York Times

"Both a fun read and a breath of fresh air to anyone who lived through the ghastly experience of last year's presidential election season . . . Utopia for Realists argues, with humor and sympathy, that we've all suffered from forgetting how to dream of a better world....What's so interesting about modern America is our hostility to the mere idea of trying to create an easier and happier life. We're a country that was once rich with social experimentation . . . Now we don't really even try, and mostly just scream at each other on the Internet. That doesn't seem like it will get us there. Maybe free money and a three-hour workday won't, either, but it sure seems like it would be more fun to try."
― Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

"Convincing . . . Entertaining and reasoned . . . Bregman's book makes for enjoyable reading, and it is packed with colorful factual asides . . . Utopia for Realists should make for good conversation at the next dinner party."― Benjamin Cunningham, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Provocative and ambitious...The book is lively, well-researched, and full of unlikely pieces of history."― Tim Harford , Financial Times

" Utopia for Realists is fantastic. A quick glance turned into hours of riveting reading. Very seldom does a book change the way you think about some of most intractable problems of society, and of life. This one did. Read this book."― Sydney Finkelstein, director of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

"If you're bored with hackneyed debates and decades-old right-wing and left-wing clichés, you may enjoy the bold thinking, fresh ideas, lively prose, and evidence-based arguments in Utopia for Realists."
― Steven Pinker, New York Times bestselling author of The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of Our Nature

"Bregman speaks with impressive authority . . . His solutions are quite simple and staunchly set against current trends . . . He has assembled a wealth of empirical evidence to make his case. Better than that, though, Utopia for Realists is not a dry, statistical analysis-although he doesn't shy from solid data-but a book written with verve, wit, and imagination. The effect is charmingly persuasive, even when you can't quite believe what you're reading . . . Listen out for Rutger Bregman. He has a big future shaping the future."― Andrew Anthony, The Guardian UK

"Rutger Bregman is part of a new generation of thinkers who are suggesting exciting alternatives to the orthodoxies of the last forty years. In this surprising, accessible, and often counterintuitive book, Bregman explores some brilliant but simple ideas for making a better world."― Brian Eno

"A spirited and practical manifesto for improving the odds of making a heaven on Earth."
―Kirkus

"[Bregman] engagingly examines basic income schemes... entertaining and intriguing.... These are appealing notions, presented here in a breezy, TED talk-like style."

"This book is brilliant. Everyone should read it. Bregman shows us we've been looking at the world inside out. Turned right way out, we suddenly see fundamentally new ways forward. If we can get enough people to read this book, the world will start to become a better place."

― Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

"Learning from history and from up-to-date social science can shatter crippling illusions. It can turn allegedly utopian proposals into plain common sense. It can enable us to face the future with unprecedented enthusiasm. To see how, read this superbly written, upbeat, insightful book."

― Philippe van Parijs, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network

"This is a Read Now book. Nothing dystopian about this one: a young (he's 29), practical set of ideas for how the next generation can do better."― Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

" An important book, a wonderfully readable breath of fresh air, a window thrown open to a better future. As politicians and economists are asking how to increase productivity, ensure full employment, and downsize government, Bregman asks: What actually makes life worth living and how can we get there? He combines deep research with wit, challenging us to think anew about how we want to live and who we want to be. Required reading."

― Philipp Blom, author of The Vertigo Years and A Wicked Company

''It's a wonderful, well-written book, easily the crispest and least dry explanation of the research and history behind basic income as an idea I've seen in print."― Dylan Matthews, Vox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World [Bregman, Rutger] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

# data[].attributes.headline
There is no debate over critical race theory (The Atlantic, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.subject
There is no debate over critical race theory (The Atlantic, July 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opponents of Critical Race Theory Are Arguing With Themselves - The Atlantic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's about reaching students where they really are.

Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.
In the fall of 2001, armed with an undergraduate science degree and a rushed teaching credential, I stood in front of a sea of Black and brown middle-school students in the Bronx and announced that I was their teacher. On the first day of school, I told them, "This is my class. I am going to be teaching you science and math. You will listen, you will work hard, and you will be respectful." I had practiced these lines in the mirror for weeks. My shoulders were back, my hands were in my pockets, and my teacher scowl had been perfected. Everything I had been told about how to teach-that success was only attained in a quiet, contained classroom, and you had to be tough to maintain it-was contained in those few lines.

A few weeks later, I was walking the aisles of the classroom while my students were working quietly on math problems, when loud sirens began to penetrate the walls. Thinking it was just another police car or ambulance, I yelled at my students to focus. In that moment, ensuring that they were not yielding to distractions was my biggest concern. But the sirens persisted for longer than usual. Students looked up at me with concern; my brows tightened in a scowl that forced their eyes back to their notebooks. I knew that no math was happening, but as long as no eyes were lifted from the page, I felt successful. Then the phone rang.

The voice on the other end informed me that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. Parents were storming the school building and wanted to take their children home. I was told to keep the students focused and not tell them that anything was happening. One student in my class, scared by the sirens and the confusion, asked if she could call her mother. I said no.

In the weeks that followed, words like terrorist and bomber became common language. On more than one occasion, I heard those words hurled at the three Muslim students in my classroom, but I just told the students who had wielded them to watch their language and kept on teaching.

I taught through violence against Muslim students and used the permission I tacitly received from the school to justify my inaction. I ignored the chaos of the world beyond the classroom because I believed that it was my job to just keep on teaching. Looking back now, I realize I was not actually teaching at all.

Almost 20 years after September 11, 2001, the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as another siren, tearing through our collective sense of normal. We are responding to this virus and adjusting our methods for remote learning. But institutional racism is also deadly, and it's even more widespread. Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, had a symptomatic case of the racism virus. But teachers place metaphorical knees on the necks of young people in classrooms all the time-and their symptoms aren't always as obvious. I know this because I had the virus, too.

The best teachers don't just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. In my years in the classroom since 2001, I've learned something about how to do this. I call it reality pedagogy, because it's about reaching students where they really are, making sure that their lives and backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and in classroom conversations.

Reality pedagogy interrupts the notion that teaching is about managing students and their behavior. Instead, I've learned to see them as co-teachers, and I create space for dialogue-in small groups outside of class-about how they experience the classroom and the world beyond it. It's a space for connection, but also for any critiques they have of my teaching. These conversations are generative for everyone involved. Teachers need feedback from their students, who can see what teachers have been trained to ignore in their blind pursuit of a calm, quiet classroom. And students need a sense of agency, which they are often denied.

Co-teaching requires that teachers be humble enough to become students of their students-especially the students who have been most harmed, and will benefit most from a teacher listening to their experiences. In my first years of teaching, I never asked to hear my students' thoughts about having to sit and learn while the world around them was going crazy. I didn't make space for my Muslim students to heal from being targeted. But if I had started that dialogue, I would have learned a lot from them about how I could have been a better teacher.

When students have this kind of agency, a classroom can start to function like a family-or even a small society. I give all of my students a classroom responsibility that counts toward their grades and involves taking care of the physical classroom and each other. And I institute democratic decision making for all actions taken in the classroom: Students help to decide what assignments we work on, how long we spend on activities, and what to discuss. The classroom can serve as an example of what the world should look like- all students with equal power, regardless of their culture or background-rather than a replication of what it is.

Reality pedagogy involves connecting academic content to events happening in the world that affect students. The curriculum can weave in specific references to the neighborhoods where young people are from, inequities that they and their families are hurt by, and protests in the community. But that doesn't mean these lessons are always serious. Students can compete to show their knowledge through art, games, and music. I have created projects like the Science Genius competition, where young people write raps about science content and events happening in their lives and compete to be the best scientist, rapper, and storyteller. The classroom-especially for Black youth-should not feel like a place where they are policed or silenced. Black joy can be a part of daily learning.

All teachers will sometimes fail. But that's why we have to accurately see ourselves in the classroom. I suggest that teachers videotape their teaching for study, so they can self-diagnose for the racism virus they may be suffering from and spreading unintentionally.

In 2001, I thought that good teaching meant delivering content knowledge to students who were behaving "appropriately." In 2020, I know that is not enough. I've learned to see my classroom as a platform for empowering students and transforming society, and to use my pedagogy as a form of protest against norms that silence students. Far from sacrificing content knowledge, engaged students, whose voices are heard, are better able to learn it.

A pedagogy of protest privileges dialogue with students even when the school schedule says there is no time for it. It creates space for youth to teach about their lives even when the curriculum says there is no space for it. It focuses on building community and family even when the school administration tells teachers not to express emotion with students. If teachers want to respond to racism as they've responded to the coronavirus pandemic, they can start here-in their own classrooms.
This article is part of our project "On Teaching," which is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Panta Rhea Foundation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's about reaching students where they really are.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Among those most affected by distance learning throughout the pandemic were students who are learning English as a second language - about 1.2 million students in California. This week host Zaidee Stavely talks with a teacher in Baldwin Park Unified in Los Angeles about how she's welcoming back English learners with lots of opportunities to practice speaking and making her classroom a place where students can build a community to ease the anxiety and stress caused by the pandemic.

Guest: Charlene Fried, English teacher, Sierra Vista High School, Baldwin Park Unified School District; Lecturer, California State University Los Angeles; Adjunct professor, Loyola Marymount University.
Read more EdSource stories about this topic:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Host Zaidee Stavely talks with a teacher in Los Angeles about how she's welcoming back English learners with lots of opportunities to practice speaking and making her classroom a place where students can build a community to ease the anxiety and stress caused by the pandemic.