Ask any teacher who was in the classroom before the pandemic, and now, if education has changed. Almost every single one will say that it has.
Ask any teacher who began their teaching career during the pandemic how burnt out they are, after only a few years. They will agree that teaching is harder than they thought and their programs likely did not prepare them for what lay ahead. And that is not to be disrespectful towards the programs; no one could have foreseen how education was going to shift during the pandemic and what the fallout might be.
How has post-pandemic education changed the classroom?
Consider two post-pandemic education shifts: technology and students.
1. Technology
Pre-pandemic, in public schools, it was not common for all students to have a laptop or similar device that they would carry with them to use at home and school. According to a survey conducted by the Institute of Educational Sciences (2021) approximately 45% of schools who responded to the survey indicated that they had the capability to do a 1:1 computer ratio with students before the pandemic, however 34% of teachers reported that the software was outdated, and 34% reported that a lack of support for teachers to understand the technology was a problem. This was before the pandemic even began. This has changed, as now most public schools have either issued laptops to students, or have them on the ready for students, should the need arise to shift back to a virtual learning atmosphere.
Post-pandemic students are now much more tech savvy than previously, but also much more reliant on technology than their thinking skills. This can be seen in math classes where computer programs have calculators built into them, to social studies classes where answers are “Googled” rather than the student taking the time to process what the answer might be.
Textbooks, or at least the ones made with paper, are also becoming a thing of the past. I was talking with a taxi driver the other day, when it led to the conversation of education. She started telling me how the schools in her area had made significant changes from the pandemic, but that she did not care for all of them. Her biggest pet peeve, it seemed, was a lack of textbooks. She could not understand why the only thing her son kept in his backpack now was a school-issued laptop. She kept asking me where all the textbooks had gone.
Trying to be helpful, I suggested that perhaps many had been collected and put away at the start of the pandemic, when we were not too certain how Covid was transmitted. They could easily have been destroyed from mildew, or that spray that used to be used in schools all the time. I remember many of my books being collected and boxed up, never to be seen again. I also remember books on shelves with plastic over them so when the classroom was sprayed down every night it would not destroy the books I had managed to save. Which my students could not touch, but only look at. It was quite possible that textbooks met the same fate.
With the increase in technology and due to the pandemic, the need for physical textbooks began to dwindle. Everything could be done online. Schools invested, rightly, in electronic textbooks. This gave everyone who had access to a computer access to the curriculum, regardless of whether they could attend school. But now that we are all back in person, are the textbooks ever coming back? It might be that they are not.
“While some children were able to focus on learning how to use the technology and continue their education at home, another, and rather large, demographic had to focus on matters at home.”
2. Students
Many students became care-takers during the pandemic. The older siblings often had to take care of and watch the younger siblings while parents were working outside the home, or became sick. According to the Administration for Children and Families, of those children who lost a primary caretaker during the pandemic, 65% were from a minority household (2022). The impact of this cannot be understated when it comes to education during the pandemic. While some children were able to focus on learning how to use the technology and continue their education at home, another, and rather large, demographic had to focus on matters at home. While this continued an oft-cited education disparity, or education gap, it also led to many children needing to grow up well before their time.
Once the pandemic was contained and students began to return to the classroom, many of us asked our students to go back to being the age that we thought they should be. We all knew that the pandemic had affected us, and aged us, but did we take that into account with our children? We wanted to believe that our third graders would continue to act like your typical third graders, but the reality is that they did not. They had also aged. Not every student experienced death or hardship, but they were all traumatized and had matured.
So now what?
Education has been turned upside down and right side out, having not quite righted itself from the pandemic. Some would argue that this is a needed change, a long time coming, while others would spout that this is the end of education as we know it. Our children are doomed.
Perhaps post-pandemic education is somewhere in between. The purpose of this blog site, this blog, and more to come, is not to find all the answers. Anyone who has been in education for a while knows that this field is ever changing and evolving. This is due to our greater understanding of the field as more research and time in the classroom is logged. But it is also due to the field itself, which works with humans. Those pesky creatures that do not always do what they are supposed to, and change things up on us all the time. Any teacher can tell you that is true in their classroom.
On any given day you can walk into my classroom and see students learning. But also on any given day, you can walk into my classroom and see chaos and wonder how in the heck people continually give me keys to a classroom. No one is perfect. No teacher is. But we show up every day to do our best for our students. So here’s a place that understands that, and wants to talk out these issues. We won’t always make it better, but maybe we can be a presence that affirms that we see you. We are with you. My classroom is next door if you need anything.
References
Contreras, J. (2022). Addressing the Impacts of Parent and Caregiver Loss on Children. Administration for Children and Families. Retrieved from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/policy-guidance/addressing-impacts-parent-and-caregiver-loss-children.
Gray, L., and Lewis, L. (2021). Use of Educational Technology for Instruction in Public Schools: 2019–20 (NCES 2021- 017). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2021017.