Ed Tech Integration Corner

Hello again, from the Ed Tech Integration corner of the JRCOE! We are at the end of an unprecedented school year. I know many of you are exhausted. I am. I plan on doing as little as possible this summer so I can recharge and be ready to teach again in August.

Almost a year ago, I asked, “How do educators meet student’s physical, emotional, psychological needs through an online platform--or when those students do not have access to technology (except for a phone)?” I have tried to provide tools and resources to help you make those necessary connections with students, but if you were like me, you know you were not your best this past year. And that’s okay. We were living through and teaching through a pandemic…and many had to do it without extra resources, time or support. In fact, many educators had so much extra work and expectations placed on them that they felt like you were drowning all year. Plus, we’ve had a lot of misinformation about schools being “closed” (they weren’t) and students “falling behind” (they aren’t).

Schools stayed open because school is not just a brick-and-mortar building. School is the people and the community we build with our students. Education happens everywhere—not just a formal building. This brings me to the second inaccuracy: students have fallen behind. But fallen behind what? Standards are arbitrary measures of a student’s abilities and learning. We set the standards. We can change and modify them, too. Plus, the entire world has been dealing with the pandemic, so isn’t everyone “behind?” Notice many of the people pushing the learning loss myth are trying to sell you ways to make up for the loss. Or they’re pushing an agenda against public schools.

Here are a couple articles to help you work against these beliefs:

https://www.garnpress.com/news/leave-the-kids-alone-the-myth-of-pandemic-slide

This is a good one to use with students: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/learning/do-you-think-you-have-experienced-learning-loss-during-the-pandemic.html

This one addresses the larger need to systemically change our schools (something Covid further highlighted): https://truthout.org/articles/fixating-on-pandemic-learning-loss-undermines-the-need-to-transform-education/

And one more for good measure: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/03/10/what-learning-loss-really-means/

If we buy into the banking method of schooling (Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: https://www.pitt.edu/~writecen/BankingConcept.pdf), then our kids probably did miss out on a lot of learning. However, as teachers, we know students are not empty receptacles into which we pour knowledge. They are living, breathing and messy humans. And so are we.

I wasn’t my best this past year. I didn’t write the great American novel—hey, I even took my first incomplete. I just couldn’t finish that last paper for my grad school classes. I didn’t invent anything useful. I didn’t churn out a hit record. I didn’t remodel my house. I didn’t do any of the amazing things I always said I would do if I had the time. LOL! Instead, I dropped a lot of balls. I got behind on everything. Some days just dragging myself out of bed and taking a shower felt like a heroic act.

I don’t believe in learning loss, but I do believe many of our students did learn. They gained knowledge and wisdom inside and outside of a school building and with and without us there to guide them. Just like they always do. They learned some fun lessons with us and some crappy lessons with us. They laughed as we all learned to navigate online learning, and they cried over personal and collective losses. They missed their friends and us. They lived their lives as best they could through a pandemic. And hopefully they knew we were right there with them: laughing, crying, loving, losing.

So, I’m too exhausted to offer any brilliant tips, but I do want to pass on what I’ve told my preservice teachers since we moved online: cut yourself some slack. Give yourself room to be human, whatever that looks like and however messy you are. It is okay to make mistakes. It is okay to miss deadlines. It is okay to take a deep breath and try again tomorrow.

We are teachers…but we are also human beings.

Let yourself be human this summer. If anyone asks, tell them someone at OU assigned it as homework.