I hope school never gets back to normal

I think we can all agree that distance learning, hybrid learning, asynchronous learning, and all of the options we have to keep school going during this pandemic are less-than-ideal.  Across the United States, teachers, students, and parents/guardians are generally miserable trying to make the most of the school days we have while we hope for a Covid-19 vaccine that may take years to create and distribute.  In my own circumstance, I truly admire how hard my co-workers, my students, and their parents and guardians are trying despite the adversity.  I’m not hearing excuses and I’m not hearing surrender.  I’m also not hearing satisfaction and I’m certainly not hearing joy. The overwhelming sentiment from people with a stake in education seems to be this:

“I can’t wait for school to get back to normal.”

​In times of uproar, dreams of normalcy make perfect sense.  We didn’t plan for this, we don’t like this, and we wish it would go away.  It is easy to reminisce about the predictable comfort of school days past as we try to (literally) survive our current, undesirable situation.  “Wouldn’t it be great,” we ask ourselves, “if we could just get back to normal?”

​I get it.  In fact, I’ve even said it.  A lot.  I’m teaching kids I’ve never met. They’re trying to learn on tools that were literally designed to be devices of distraction.  Most of my favorite teaching strategies don’t make sense from a distance, which makes it feel like I’m working with both hands tied behind my back.  Normal sounds like a dream come true right now.  Normal would end all the frustration.  Normal can’t return fast enough.  "Wouldn't it be great if we could just get back to normal?"
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No.  It wouldn't be great.

Before this all started, we were fed up with normal, too.

Normal came with several massive achievement gaps.  Normal meant record levels of anxiety and depression for teens, tweens, and, increasingly, even younger students.  Normal was driving away half of teachers before their fifth year.  Normal was 27th in the world in educational achievement.  Normal had ⅔ of our nation’s students behind grade-level in reading and math.  Normal left graduates feeling like they tested too much and learned to manage their life and emotions too little.  Normal tried to standardize kids who live in a customized world.  Normal pushed compliance in a world that values initiative.

​Seven months ago, that’s how we felt about normal.
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Two to five years from now, when schools are no longer shackled by the constraints of Covid-19 in the United States, returning to normal shouldn’t be our goal. Comforting as normal seems right now, it was already time to tear normal down and build something new. ​Now is the time to start building an educational system we actually want so that we’re ready when the time comes.
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We need a system built for individual differences rather than one that scrambles to squeeze in accommodations for them.  We need a system built for creating, thinking, and problem-solving rather than memorizing, choice-picking, and teacher-pleasing.  We need a system built to provide students with agency, choice, and enthusiasm.  We need a system that makes teaching a job that people actually want to have.  We need a system built to give the most to the students able to bring the least.  We need a system built to prepare students for tomorrow, not for yesterday.

​"Normal stinks."

It was time to break up with normal a long time ago.  We were decades overdue. In 1983, we decided our nation was at risk because of the state of our educational system.  The solution?  More normal. The report concluded that normal wasn’t the problem, we just weren’t doing it right or enough.  In 2001, we declared that we were ready to stop leaving children behind.  Unfortunately, at the time, we thought we could do that by doubling down on normal.  We thought, again, that if we really did normal extra hard, we could make it work better for everybody.

We couldn’t.

And we still can’t.

Sometimes it can be hard to build something new before the old thing really falls apart.  Well, the old thing is about to really fall apart.

Two to five years from now, whenever it is, we’re going to be ready to send every American child back to school.  The difference in what they’re going to be prepared for is going to be absolutely massive.  Some will have been on AI-based computer programs with no teacher for years.  Some will have been going to school one or two days a week for years.  Some will have learned almost nothing academic in years.  On the other hand,  those with a quality distance learning program and the discipline to stay with it may still be right on track. Others will have had parents at home to work with and push them, and they will be years ahead.  Merely dropping all of these students into a “grade level” based on how old they are and telling them to sink or swim would be a huge mistake. There isn’t a teacher in the world who is going to be able to manage that discrepancy the “normal” way.
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A future teacher trying to figure how to make normal work after the pandemic.

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Normal can’t handle what’s coming. It wasn’t really handling the past, either, but it really can’t handle the future.

If we return to normal a few years from now, we know exactly what we’re going to get. I hope we never go back.

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• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
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