Let’s Call It a Win
A few days ago, a student I am coaching started his session with, “I am so happy to be in-person again.” What? He’s never been happy to go to school! Clearly, distance learning has made him appreciate being in school, something that I would never have expected.
This is just one example of the many moments of distance learning that we can be thankful for. The conversation and his realization that school can be enjoyable is a definite win. The past school year has been anything but perfect, but are all wins perfect? Some are clumsy, poorly executed, boring, or just bad, but they are still wins. We’ve all had small wins this past year, our children are still standing, they are still attending classes, they have shown tremendous resilience, and they had time to eat dinner with us. We used to say that we wanted more family time and the pandemic offered that.
As we move back to more in-person school we need to adjust our view of “normal” because there hasn’t been a “normal'' for a year and really, if we are truly honest with ourselves, what is normal? Prior to the pandemic, our children were stressed. There were constant newspaper and magazine articles about college attrition, overly supported high school students and perfectionism, significant increases in childhood anxiety and school rigor that was unhealthy. None of those should be normal so maybe this reset will ultimately benefit our children.
Schools seem to be increasing in-person time while not increasing the pressure. This might be just what students needed. School systems, administrators, and classroom teachers are discussing the need to assess the students’ emotional wellbeing as they move back towards traditional school schedules. It appears that there is less homework, better work pacing, and more time built into the day for self-advocacy and review. This might be just what was needed to balance the previous school pace and our children’s mental health.
This last year has been an interesting time, but we have had other interesting times in history. Children made it through wars, financial crises, environmental catastrophes, and more. Some of those historic resets improved how we approached education and allowed for some meaningful change. The pandemic may have also caused some positive educational understanding; in the least, it has caused us to better understand the importance of community to learning and the need to better balance the pace and rigor of schoolwork. As parents, we want the best for our children, we want them to have everything we can possibly give them, but maybe what we need to let them know that we have seen their effort, their ability to shift, their resilience, and even when there were stressful times, (learning isn’t perfect) they should be proud of their effort. Ultimately, we should consider our children making it through distance learning and moving back to in-person learning as a win that we can take.