When Everything is Different: Act Different

The Readiness Projects Partners

We’re ready to embrace a new mode of partnership for transformative learning and development and robust equity.

The new school year has always been a time of renewal, a season of getting back into routines, a transition time for new opportunity. 2020 gives us the most unique moment in time to reset, reassess and reenvision our work, our partnerships, and our potential as a society.

As millions of young people nationwide are demonstrating every day — learning happens in all kinds of settings including schools, homes, community hubs, libraries and more. And those learners are supported by a wide circle of adults: teachers, youth development professionals, parents, and neighbors.

And virtual academic classes are just part of learning. Our children and youth are involved in virtual and COVID-safe experiences in arts and sports, with new family responsibilities like cooking, and as community volunteers learning critical social and emotional lessons, strengthening life skills like resilience and perseverance, and gaining health and wellness expertise unimagined before.

It’s obvious now: learning is not just about academics. Learning happens everywhere. It’s about relationships. It’s about experiences. To ensure that youth thrive we need a different approach.

“This can be a watershed point in our history,” asserts Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Administrators Association, “where we work together and finally succeed in promoting equity and excellence for all learners.” The September issue of School Administrator focuses in on “table partners” and how schools need to include community organizations in deliberations to “encourage us to think differently, so that we can see differently, so that we can act together…This could be the beginning of a powerful change in American education,” Domenech emphasizes. (Domenech’s Coming Back Better perspective piece appears on page 44 of the magazine and can also be found here.)

And we agree. Schools are part of communities. Schools cannot rebuild during this COVID pandemic alone. The lines of before, during and after school and family are unclear and demand that we think about a more seamless system.

The bottom-line is that learning has not stopped; simply, buildings have closed. If our focus point is “transformative learning and development” what might the system look like beyond buildings? For example, “we should think of summer 2020 through summer 2021 as one school year, one educational time period, rather than parse out our plans in three distinct time periods, so that we have time to think about recovery and acceleration and some new innovation,” offers Hal Smith, senior vice president at the National Urban League, a coordinating partner in the Readiness Projects. “So rather than create artificial barriers, there’s an opportunity to think about an 18-month period where we are going to work with parents, children and educators in a more connected way compared to the typical school year,” Smith reflects in an interview with the Wallace Foundation, one of the Readiness Projects’ major funders.

As part of the Readiness Projects, we’ve launched Build Forward Together, a new endeavor eschewing a return to “normal” and encouraging all players to Act Differently. AASA is joining us as core partners in the Build Forward Together work. Together with a range of co-strategists from across education, youth development, health and family supports, we are asking the question: As partnerships have risen up to respond to the current crises, what can we do to support and incentivize them to reimagine what can be and build forward together?

Now is the moment to:

- Think Differently: Use science findings on learning and development to emphasize that better learning outcomes require stronger relationships and active learning experiences

- See Differently: Talk to young people. Learn from learners. Gather information from all adults and settings. Use this intel and information to address the inequities within and across systems

- Act Differently: Work smarter. Take time to assess the ripple effects decisions made by one system have on others (e.g. schedules). Operate with a shared sense of what matters most across the spaces and places where young people spend their time.

The only way to accelerate progress, upend inequity, and fully leverage the science is to make all of the components in the learning and development ecosystem visible and then take shared responsibility for addressing gaps and increasing opportunity TOGETHER by acknowledging and respecting all of our important roles, assets, and perspectives.

We’ll share more about Build Forward Together in the months to come. We realize the goal is tricky — to meet local leaders where we hope they will be in Spring 2021: Ready to take stock and look ahead. We also acknowledge that for us all to be ready for “next” we must keep up with the changing realities of “now.” A number of our partners have been tracking and responding to the slew of re-opening plans and recommendations. In addition to an array of resources that can be found at AASA.org, a few real-time resources include:

• The American Institutes for Research has curated a list of Resources to Go Beyond the Basics and Support the Whole Child, including a review of the national guidance around reopening and rebuilding efforts, a resource for families and caregivers, an exploration of the role of afterschool and summer programs and guides or recommendations from key partners such as CASEL and the Science of Learning and Development Alliance.
• The National Urban League has developed Restart Smart: A Guide to School Reopening During a Pandemic.
• The Learning Policy Institute recently published Restarting and Reinventing School: Learning in the Time of COVID and Beyond.
• Turnaround for Children has developed Resources for the Three R’s: Relationships, Routines and Resilience, with materials for use by parents and educators during the pandemic and beyond.
• The Afterschool Alliance has a state by state map linking to state-wide afterschool network information on COVID-19 for most states.
• The Search Institute’s Checklist for Building Developmental Relationships During the COVID-19 Crisis focuses on how adults across settings should take steps to express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities.

Responding to now and preparing for next. Let’s embrace “different” this new school year and resolve to leave “normal” behind.