Author

Special to redefinED

Avatar

Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedSchool Choice

Diversifying modes of instruction

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary from Bruce Hermie, director of school partnerships for the American Federation for Children, appeared earlier this month on the AFC blog.

Widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have launched many school leaders into uncharted waters.

Educational strategies have been executed on digital or distance platforms and budgets that were set in January are now requiring reassessment and, in some cases, painful cuts that will have long term ramifications on school vitality and growth. Now, more than ever, it is imperative school leaders look to the future and give consideration of not only how to survive their immediate reality, but find the inspiration and courage to help their schools emerge stronger and more effective to meet the multi-faceted needs of their students, teachers, and communities.

It is said that fortune favors the bold. If there was ever an opportunity for school leadership to rethink their approach and redeploy resources to meet the challenges ahead, that time is now.

As each school is its own unique learning organization, the search for one magic panacea that will work for a flawless and safe path forward for every school is fool’s gold. School leaders who understand the nuances of their schools and communities will be best served assessing their own resources, finding what avenues for instruction and safety are possible, and pairing that to guidance being given by health professionals to set forward a plan that meets the needs of their students and faculties in a multi-pronged approach.

Most school leaders have come to the conclusion they must prepare for in-person, hybrid, and online learning scenarios. Instead of guessing at which of the three could occur, why not empower students/parents and teachers to choose the method of delivery which best fits their own realities?

A recent poll that appeared in USA Today found that one in five teachers reported they may not report back for the start of the school year. A separate poll indicated 60 percent of parents said they were willing to pursue at home learning options for their children as opposed to returning them to in-person classes when schools resume in the fall.

This information should serve as notice that options for mode of education are more necessary now than ever.

In schools where multiple classes per grade exist, why not embrace flexibility and give families and teachers the option? If schools were to designate one or two teachers to be the “online” teacher for their respective grades, families could then choose whether distance learning or in-person education best fits their needs and comfort level.

Teachers at risk from a health standpoint would also have the ability to continue to work and educate from the safety of their home while those who crave a return to in-person instruction can return to campus. One benefit of committing to such a model full time is it allows for professional development and evolution of distance learning strategies and competencies should the need to pivot to full-time online instruction for all students occur again.

Schools may find other unexpected benefits in diversifying the way they educate. In the short term, diversification will lend to a smaller number of in-person students on campus, making the adherence to CDC guidelines for safety more manageable. In the long-term, schools may see an increase in enrollment as families who seek this flexibility for a myriad of reasons including health, special interests outside of the academic realm that require flexible scheduling, and a simple desire by parents to be more deeply involved in the education of their children.

In a time filled with many stresses and an unknown future for many school leaders, the best thing to do is what always must be the priority for any educator: serving the children effectively, keeping them as safe as possible, and allowing them the room to grow into capable young women and men who have a positive impact on society.

Schools that find ways to do this effectively and have courage to move past the status quo will thrive while those who fail to be imaginative struggle to regain a lost normal.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCommon GroundCoronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceCustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

Future ready: the new version of school

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This post from Tom Vander Ark, co-founder and CEO of Getting Smart and a partner in Learn Capital, was originally posted on Forbes and appeared May 24 n the Getting Smart blog.

School leaders have about 90 days to get future ready. For many, it will require four infrastructure decisions and four innovation decisions.

This fall, many school districts and networks will find themselves running a distanced onsite program and a remote program simultaneously. There will also be an increased demand for full-time online learning and hybrid options.

The four new or updated elements of future-ready infrastructure include a blended core program, a distanced onsite strategy, an updated remote program and an online program.

Blend the core academic program

Many schools have spent five or 10 years blending digital tools and resources into their print-based curriculum and updating their instructional strategies. Some spent the last two months catching up.

Five years ago, our Implementation Guide 3.0 described blended learning as “a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home.”

A blended learning program is a learning management system (LMS) to manage content and assignments across different modes of learning (i.e., onsite and remote). Some districts put off a platform decision or allowed teachers to make their own decisions. But now is the time for schoolwide (if not districtwide) use of a common platform–the pandemic made it clear that education is officially a team sport and one where shared agility is mission-critical.

The second decision is defining a consistent approach to learning materials. That used to mean adopted textbooks but, in many cases, those can be replaced with high quality digital open educational resources and supplemented with teacher-developed content. The benefit of engaging asynchronous digital content became even more evident in the last two months.

A few platforms come loaded with content and embedded assessments that can provide a head start for running full-time online schools (discussed below). Some innovative schools like Purdue Polytechnic in Indianapolis, use one of these platforms for personalized knowledge and skill development, and supplement it with big integrated community-connected projects.

One thing this pandemic made clear is the benefit of collaboration (workflow and project management) and communication tools (texting and video conferencing) to keep you and your team and students connected.

You won’t find a suite of tools that does everything you want but options are improving.  Canvas from Instructure and Schoology from Powerschool are popular platforms. Google Classroom and G Suite and Microsoft Classroom, 365, and Teams aren’t full-featured learning management systems but they are integrated collaboration and communication ecosystems –and they’re free.

Update your remote strategy

Because learners – small and large groups – may be moving back and forth between remote and onsite learning it will be important to link modes of learning.

Staff members may also need to work remotely periodically requiring temporary staffing strategies – teachers and leaders will need to be especially flexible next year.

Schools may need to update plans for take home mobile technology and strengthen broadband partnerships (discounts, mobile and community hotspots), to reach as close to every household as possible.

Build a social distanced onsite solution

Use a combination of place-shifting (i.e., extra spaces) and time-shifting (i.e., staggered schedules) to build a social distancing solution if that’s how you have to start school. The decision will depend on the number of buses you have and the number of cycles they make. The number of parents that choose to have their children stay home and participate in remote (or online) learning will also influence this strategy.

Some parents may also choose onsite learning but will avoid busing. In all cases, it will be important for school and district administrators to communicate with and survey parents/guardians frequently.

Start or partner with online school

With full and part-time enrollment, online schools are designed to support learning at home. Thousands of students transferred to online schools when school buildings closed and hundreds of thousands of students may follow over the next 18 months. As a result, school districts are scrambling to create online options to prevent further defections.

School districts that don’t have an online school, should start one or partner with one in their state. They can contract with a statewide provider, or license content from a statewide provider or assemble open content (like OpenEd from ACT), or use asynchronous content (like Edgenuity or Edmentum).

The new opportunity that someone will figure out in the next two years is combining the benefits of robust asynchronous content with project-based learning.

Every metropolitan area could use a cooperative online provider that provides online and hybrid (like two days a week onsite) options to families and a place for teachers that can’t teach in a school building–an online matching service for families looking for options and teachers needing alternative placement.

The four innovation opportunities are work that matters, skills for thriving, meeting learners where they are, and responsive options.

Note: 3,400 school districts have pledged to be Future Ready Schools and are probably making progress in these four areas.

Tom Vander Ark is author of “Better Together,” “Smart Parents,” “Smart Cities,” “Getting Smart” and “The Power of Place.” He is co-founder of Getting Smart and Learn Capital and serves on the boards of Education Board Partners, 4.0 Schools, Digital Learning Institute, Latinx Education Collaborative, Mastery Transcript Consortium and eduInnovation. Follow Tom on Twitter, @tvanderark.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedParent EmpowermentParent VoicesSchool ChoiceSpecial Needs Education

Can I be a pioneer?

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Karla Phillips, a long-time advocate for both school choice and inclusion, realizes she may need to change her personal and policy focus as she begins researching the best middle school for her daughter, Vanessa.

Editor’s note: Today’s post was written expressly for redefinED by education policy veteran and choice advocate Karla Phillips of Phoenix.

I love seeing new posts on the National Catholic Board on Full Inclusion Facebook page. It’s so encouraging to see the increasing number of schools welcoming students of all abilities.

But when I find myself daydreaming about my daughter perhaps becoming the first girl with Down syndrome to attend an elite school in our area, like Phoenix Christian or Xavier Prep, I have to stop and wonder—am I ready to be a pioneer?

Parents of students with disabilities take incredible leaps of faith when they enroll their children as the “first” in a school. Some make the choice because they are pursuing a faith-based education. Others may be driven to the decision because nothing else has worked for their child.

Regardless of the reason, these parents and their children are forgoing more traditional territory – district schools with formal programs, therapies, etc. – to become pioneers of inclusion and school choice. And that’s not an easy decision.

I have spent a fair share of my career fighting for school choice and supporting the efforts of state leaders to create as many opportunities as possible for students, especially those with disabilities. But now I am the parent and my daughter is the student. And we are faced with the decision of where to enroll for middle school.

When I was looking for my daughter’s first school six years ago, prospects were grim. More often than not, I was “counseled out” of the schools we were considering. We eventually found a wonderful school, but it wasn’t an easy task.

This time around, I’ve noticed a change.

More schools are willing to discuss the possibility of Vanessa enrolling. And while they would enjoy having Vanessa as a student, they’re not sure they’re prepared. A common refrain has been, “We have never had a child with Down syndrome.”

I often joke: “Neither have I.”

Despite their kindness, a message rings loud and clear: Many schools feel neither prepared nor equipped to welcome students with disabilities. 

A new report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education examined how parents of children with disabilities choose their school. These parents reported similar experiences to mine. One parent explained that, “the lack of expertise is an urgent barrier for successful inclusion.”

In fact, CRPE’s new research uncovered a surprising truth:

“Having more choices without quality special education programming feels worse to families with children with disabilities than no choice at all, even if having more options makes the community as a whole better off.”

We’re told we have choices, but we feel like we don’t because schools aren’t ready to serve our kids. This isn’t what we have fought for.

I have spoken with some of the pioneers – parents of students with disabilities who have taken the leap into school choice – and their stories are often the same. The parents are either directly or indirectly finding the needed resources or services for their children.

The researchers at CRPE also found that “some parents had used their insurance or out-of-pocket funding to support their child, a potential barrier to educational access for some families.”

I have proudly pronounced myself an advocate for both school choice and inclusion, but I am realizing that I might need to change my personal and policy focus.

States are increasingly offering parents more school choice options. But for these choices to be truly viable options for all students, we need to identify ways to empower and equip schools and educators who will both welcome our children and help them reach their full potential.

Karla Phillips is senior director of policy for KnowledgeWorks, and with more than 20 years’ experience, she is a seasoned veteran of education policy. As the mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, her passionate advocacy for all students has carried over into special education and disability policy. She is a graduate of Indiana University and received a master’s degree in public administration from Arizona State University. She lives in Phoenix with her husband and children.  

2 comments
2 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedHomeschoolingSchool Choice

Homeschooling: Innocent until proven guilty

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Convinced she could provide her children with all their educational needs, Evelyn Reyes of New Port Richey, Florida, began homeschooling her children eight years ago and realized she could combine education time with family time. PHOTO: Lance Rothstein

Editor’s note: This commentary was written expressly for redefinED by Matthew H. Lee, a graduate student in education policy at the University of Arkansas; Angela R. Watson, senior research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy; and redefinED guest blogger Patrick J. Wolf, distinguished professor of education policy and endowed chair at the University of Arkansas.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” — C.S. Lewis

What prompted Cevin Soling, Freedman-Martin fellow in journalism at Harvard’s Kennedy School, to choose this warning as he introduced an event at Harvard earlier this month?

The “tyranny sincerely exercised” is the presumptive ban against homeschooling that Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet recommends in her recent Arizona Law Review article, “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.”

Her proposed ban puts parents “ideologically committed to isolating their children” on trial and assumes their guilt for denying “their children any meaningful education” and subjecting their children to “terrifying physical and emotional abuse.” It shifts the burden of proof to the accused to “demonstrate they would provide a significantly superior education.”

What happened to a presumption of innocence before the law?

Far from Bartholet’s accusations, homeschooling is not a small, monolithic practice dominated “overwhelmingly” by conservative Christians. At any given time, homeschoolers make up roughly 3 percent of the school-age population, and one study published in the Peabody Journal of Education estimates that as many as 10 percent of all American students are homeschooled at some point during their academic careers.

A 2019 Center for Reinventing Public Education report finds the most rapidly growing homeschooling subgroups are people of color. Another report published in the Peabody Journal of Education noted that “The phenomenon of increasing black home education represents a radical transformative act of self-determination, the likes of which have not been witnessed since the 1960s and ‘70s.”

Meanwhile, National Center for Education Statistics data show that homeschool respondents are more concerned with the “environment of other schools” and “academic instruction” than they “desire to provide religious instruction.”

A presumptive ban against homeschooling denies at least two rights. First, it denies parents the right to govern the education of their child, proclaimed by the US Supreme Court to be their fundamental right in 1923 (Meyer v. Nebraska), 1925 (Pierce v. Society of Sisters), and 2000 (Troxel v. Granville). Second, by giving public officials the authority to conduct home visitations in homeschooling households and to forcibly enroll children in public schools against their parents’ wishes, it denies both parents and children the right to be secure in their persons and homes against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Let’s shift the burden of proof back to homeschooling’s accusers. Can they prove that public schooling delivers better academic results, strengthens democratic values and provides a surer guarantee against abuse than homeschooling?

Homeschooled children demonstrate academic outcomes equal to or better than their public-school counterparts. While we don’t know about academic outcomes for all homeschooled students, a 2010 report by Brian Ray finds that homeschoolers on average score between 15 to 30 percentage points above the national average. As for those who pursue a college education, a review by Gene Gloeckner and Paul Jones indicates that when differences are detected, homeschooled students have higher standardized test scores and college GPAs relative to their public school peers.

Homeschoolers also compare favorably to publicly schooled students on civic and democratic values. Research by Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas finds homeschooling is associated with more political tolerance relative to public schooling. Indiana University’s Robert Kunzman reports a similar advantage in his 2009 book, “Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling.”

As for public school students, according to the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Civics Assessment, only 24 percent of U.S. eighth-graders perform at or above NAEP “Proficient” on civics.

Finally, even public schools cannot provide an absolute guarantee against abuse. In 2004, the US Department of Education estimated that one in 10 public school students will be sexually assaulted by a public school employee by the time they graduate. While abuse anywhere is unacceptable, a presumptive ban against homeschooling assumes parents are guilty of abusing their children until proven innocent while unrealistically assuming public school personnel are always innocent of such horrible transgressions. Unfortunately, they are not.

In delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in the 1925 case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Justice James McReynolds wrote, “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” Homeschooling may be the purest expression of families exercising this right and rising up to meet this high duty.

As courts have ruled repeatedly, when homeschooling is put on trial and given due process, a fair reading of the evidence gives us no choice but to emphatically declare, “Not guilty!”

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Education and Public PolicyFeaturedVirtual Education

EdNext podcast: Jeb Bush on adjusting to distance learning during the pandemic

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Earlier this week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joined Education Next editor-in-chief Marty West to talk about the lessons he learned dealing with crisis and how those lessons can be applied to the coronavirus pandemic and the challenges it poses for K-12 education.

Among the suggestions Bush offers state and national leaders: Be clear and transparent, connect on a human level, and gather the best possible minds regardless of political persuasion.  

“Just as in every disaster or every disruptive time in world history, incredible things happen when you’re forced to do things,” Bush says. “Because you have no other option, generally, you do them.”

Listen to the podcast at https://www.educationnext.org/ednext-podcast-jeb-bush-on-adjusting-to-distance-learning-during-pandemic-covid-19-coronavirus/.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
AnalysisAshley BernerBlog GuestCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ResearchFeaturedSchool Choice

New national report provides recommendations for re-opening brick-and-mortar schools

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: redefinED guest blogger Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, and David Steiner, the institute’s executive director, comment on their new report, jointly released with Chiefs for Change, that outlines relevant research and provides key recommendations for reopening K-12 schools when public officials deem it safe to do so.

COVID-19 brought face-to-face learning around the world to an abrupt halt. Now, after weeks and months of remote learning, some countries are beginning to open the schoolhouse. Others, including most U.S. systems, will not resume brick-and-mortar operations until August or September. The first order concern is, of course, the health of our families and teachers.

But education leaders already are wrestling with critical issues that are next in line, such as: How will we structure instruction to maximum effect? What additional supports should we build into the school year to prepare for abrupt changes in the future? And, most importantly, what is the best way to accelerate, rather than remediate, student learning in the wake of COVID-19?

To answer these questions, our team at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy partnered with Chiefs for Change to evaluate the research on interventions that work for students in normal times and in the wake of crises such as SARS in Hong Kong or tsunamis in Japan. The result is The Return: How Should Education Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?

Our guidance is evidence-based, represents the collective wisdom of our country’s forward-thinking chiefs, and offers concrete steps to scale up excellence. It is also sector-agnostic; the changes we suggest apply to district, charter, and private schools alike. A summary is below.

First, add hours and days of learning time to the school calendar, in line with international norms. Students in many countries take shorter summer holidays (6-8 weeks instead of 12!) and experience more days of instruction. Extending the academic year has lots of benefits, such as stanching the summer learning loss that particularly affects low-income children, and allows more young people to hold part-time jobs throughout the year. 

Second, redesign staffing models to maximize instruction and social-emotional support. Teachers have different strengths. Some possess extensive content-knowledge expertise and deliver highly effective instruction; others are incredibly adept at connecting with kids and making them feel known and seen. Changing the model makes sense. Instead of aiming for smaller class sizes across the board, we should let “master teachers” lead larger classrooms, while teachers who are demonstrably excellent at providing individualized academic support and personal relationships can lead smaller mentor groups.

Third, help students build habits of self-direction and self-regulation. There are many ways to promote these capacities, but two that we mention in the paper are building in practice time for remote learning models and allowing meaningful consequences for academic success and failure. Too few American classrooms enable the “productive struggle” of letting students wrestle with a problem until it’s satisfactorily solved; too many assessments lean heavy on teachers without placing commensurate responsibility on students to learn the material. This needs to change.

Fourth and finally, use this opportunity to ramp up the rigor of classroom instruction. Remediation toward grade-level reading or math does not work in the aggregate; students who start behind usually stay behind. Instead of addressing students’ missing skills, we should be accelerating their access to knowledge-rich materials that challenge and delight them. Skills can be learned along the way. Teachers’ professional development should meanwhile revolve around excellent use of high-quality materials – the ones they actually use in the classroom. For their part, leaders should embrace – and incentivize – content-rich assessments that are integrated with strong curricula, in every tested subject, thus creating a virtuous circle around student learning.

We know that “high expectations” matter for student success. But copious studies from around the world lead us to the much more profound, and much more specific, nature of the “high expectations” that really do narrow achievement gaps and accelerate social mobility: expect students to master, synthesize, and deploy knowledge-rich content. (For more on why curriculum matters, see recent posts on this blog (here, here, here, and here). And keep in mind that two things matter: what we teach and how effectively we teach it.

COVID-19 has been devastating for entire domains of American life. There is much we cannot control as we look ahead to Fall 2020. One thing we can do, together, is use the unexpected pause on business as usual to design education for the better.

1 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Commentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPodcastSchool ChoiceVirtual Education

How K-12 schools can meet the current moment and move beyond it

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

In this video special to redefinED, author and education reformer Michael Horn talks with education pioneer Julie Young, the founder of Florida Virtual School, a student-centered online-learning provider that focuses on competency based education rather than traditional seat time. Julie is now the CEO of Arizona State University Prep Digital, an online high school that offers an accelerated path toward college admission and the chance to earn concurrent high school and university credit. 

Horn and Young discuss the ways in which COVID-19 is a moment for teachers and families to transform learning. They also discuss a new online learning case study Young co-authored that has been published by the Pioneer Institute.

“Right now, it’s about the fundamentals. Anything that is remotely filler needs to go away. What are the standards we need to meet to feel as if we have accomplished what we need for this school year? Let’s look closely at that and focus our plans around it.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       How Arizona State University moved to full remote learning within 48 hours and the active role the university has taken in lending support to other schools

·       What states and school districts should be doing to move from the crisis of shifting to distance learning toward a more stable, sustained distance learning future

·       Preparing for a variety of fall schooling scenarios based on the virus’ effect, including continuing full-time remote learning for those who want it

·       The benefits of mastery-based education models for students with unique abilities

·       Incorporating social and emotional learning into the distance-learning model

LINKS MENTIONED:

ASU for You: Resources for every learner, at any age

Pioneer Institute – Case Study for Transition to Online Learning

0 comment
1 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail
Blog GuestCatholic SchoolsCommentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceEducator spotlightFeaturedPrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

A parent and educator shares her ‘new normal’ during COVID-19

Special to redefinED
Special to redefinED

The Capezza family: Jennie and Louis Capezza, seated; and their children, Kate, Luke and Abbey.

Editor’s note: redefinED guest blogger Jennie Capezza is director of campus ministry at John Carroll High School in Fort Pierce, Fla., and mother to three John Carrol students. She writes here of her efforts to juggle caring for her students as well as for her children during the COVID-19 crisis.

Even pre-COVID-19, our family routine was hectic. Raising three teenagers and juggling our careers required my husband and me to hold family meetings on Sunday evenings in an attempt to get a handle on the week ahead: which children had practice games, which work- and school-related meetings must be attended, and last but not least, which evenings could be set aside for family dinners with everyone at the table.

Even our best intentions to make it all work sometimes resembled a glorified fire drill.

Everything intensified five years ago when I took a giant leap of faith and left my job as a second-grade teacher to become an English teacher at John Carroll High School in Fort Pierce. That move required both a professional and personal adjustment, but it’s a decision I’ve never regretted.

Our school serves roughly 400 students in grades 9-12. We are the only Catholic school within a one-hour radius of Fort Pierce. Since 2012 when we began accepting students who are eligible for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, a program that provides the means for families with limited financial resources to attend private schools, our student body has become more representative of our community. We currently serve 77 tax credit scholarship students, as well as three students who qualify for a Gardiner Scholarship for students with unique abilities. Two students attend on the new Family Empowerment Scholarship, which extends support to middle-income families.

(All three scholarship programs are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

In my years at John Carroll, I have become fully vested in our school’s mission to inspire students in the pursuit of educational excellence, foster character formation, develop a commitment to serve and affirm the dignity of each student entrusted to our care. Certainly not a small undertaking, but one that our administration, faculty and staff embrace wholeheartedly and without reservation.

In my role as director of campus ministry, I’ve observed students, families and teachers consumed with their daily routines. Now that we’ve been unexpectedly pulled away from the school we love due to COVID-19, things are different for my colleagues and friends, and for my own family as well.

At the outset of this time of isolation, we discussed what our days would look like. We decided that the kids’ weekdays would be filled with Zoom classes, practice tests, essay revisions and vocabular reviews. My husband, who is a financial adviser, would work from home. I would continue to explore creative ways to stay connected to my students. At the weekends, we would enjoy fishing, playing tennis, trying new recipes, working in the yard, and praying together.

We’ve been able to stay true to this intention. But along the way, I’ve begun seeing our three teenagers in a different light as we’ve engaged in conversations we’ve never had before. Conversations about their dreams and the lessons they’ve learned in self-defining moments. Meanwhile, my husband and I have had the chance to share more about our life experiences than we ever have.

We all are realizing there is value in setting aside time to talk, to think, to reflect. To reminisce about the past and to set goals for the future.

This realization in turn has led me to begin thinking about what drives our lives as a family. My husband and I have always wanted the best for our children. Additionally, I’ve maintained a focus on doing whatever I can to create the best environment for my students. But it’s occurred to me that perhaps we’ve been so focused on staying busy that we’ve lost opportunities for spending and enjoying quality time with each other – time for self-expression and honest communication.

None of us know when our lives will return to “normal,” but I do know this: The opportunity to fully engage as a family over the past month has been a priceless gift. It’s one I intend to cherish and carry into whatever comes next.   

0 comment
1 FacebookTwitterPinterestLinkedinEmail