One year ago, my now-kindergartener left his bustling and diverse transitional kindergarten classroom with sensory learning areas designed for academic and social skills development to set up shop in our basement laundry room for “zoom school.” Sitting to his left and right are no longer other curious children, but an equally noisy but unsociable washer-dryer pair. For each school day since last March, my young child has dutifully donned his headphones to “attend” school via a district-issued Chromebook.
You might think this is going to be a piece about the challenges of online education for early learners. There is certainly much to say. But instead, I’d like to tell you about the humbling reality that we adults have no idea what this is like for our kids.
When nearly all of the 55 million U.S. K-12 students were sent home last March, no one knew what would be in store. Now, a year in, [pullquote]we adults have an obligation to step out of our own heads and lean in softly to the insights of those who are at the center of the COVID schooling cluster-#^&*. We need to listen to students.[/pullquote]
YouthTruth, the national nonprofit that I help lead (from the space next to the laundry/“learning” room), elevates student voices on critical issues in education, and we have long asked students about their learning experiences, social-emotional development, and well-being. We know from our national aggregate data and other studies that student engagement declines as students progress through the grade levels and that getting school culture right is hard (even in pre-pandemic times, only 1 in 3 students rated their school’s culture favorably).
What has been harder for the education field to measure and make sense of, however, is how COVID is fundamentally changing students’ experiences. The Atlantic recently cited a staggering 74,000 papers on COVID-19 that have emerged in the short time it’s taken my six-year-old to become a zoom aficionado. Guess how many national surveys have emerged to attempt to understand how the pandemic is affecting students’ experience of learning? As of this writing, 11 (many thanks to the Center for Reinventing Public Education for their free database that tracks this!).
So, we at YouthTruth have been studying student survey data to see what young people are telling us. Our recent report, "Students Weigh In, Part II: Learning & Well-Being During COVID-19" explores survey findings from more than half a million secondary students in 952 schools across 37 states during three time periods: pre-pandemic, spring 2020, and fall 2020.
It is a one-of-a-kind report that I hope you read. Last month we also hosted a national discussion of the findings with panelists from all corners of the U.S.
The student voice findings from this report will also be presented on April 22 as part of the CASEL Cares Webinar Series, connecting student voice data with social-emotional learning strategies. Register to join us and to learn with and from experts in social and emotional learning on key topics during these challenging times.
Depression, anxiety, and stress pose significant obstacles to learning with uneven impacts on student groups, and seniors are pivoting like never before. Here are just two key themes from the report.
These insights can help us adults prioritize student needs and redistribute resources for those who need them most for the rest of the academic year and to plan for fall. [pullquote]Since students are at the center of the school closure issue, why are we not centering their perspectives?[/pullquote]
If your answer is—I’m just not sure how!—then please read on for my recommendations.
Everything my child needs to know in life may not, in the end, be learned in zoom Kindergarten. But to help my child navigate the uncertainty of this moment, my role needs to be one of asking good questions and really listening. I hope you’ll join me in leading through listening and putting student voices at the center.