An Opportunity for an Improved Post-Pandemic Education

There are mountains of empirical research that fly in the face of our pre-pandemic ways of doing school. From opportunity gaps in access to the importance of motivation on student learning including the role of teacher expectations on student outcomes and the mental health pressures associated with an overemphasis on standardized testing, there’s no shortage of data in favor of changing everything.

What’s interesting is much of how we should do school has surfaced over the past year: centering on students’ social-emotional wellness, flexibility in how and what we teach, and adding more meaningful and applied learning experiences to each day.

There have been many stories of the horrors of this year of distance learning. I don’t deny the genuine hardships and losses that so many have experienced. But as an education researcher, school board member and parent, I’ve also seen some schools finally put more emphasis on what many call “soft skills” but that I see as essential: communication, problem-solving and navigating through difficult situations together while honoring our human-ness.

This year we’ve fortuitously placed a greater emphasis on “soft skills” as our kids learned to navigate new digital platforms and educators have had to take perspective of students to understand why turning on zoom cameras…