Do No Harm and Repair Harm When It Happens:
Moving Teaching and learning forward in a pandemic
“We cannot conquer what we cannot confront” (Farmer, 2020).
Taking a break from grading essays, I turned to my colleague and expressed my frustration with students who failed to turn in assignments on time. I boasted, ”When I was in school, I always found a way to get things done. Even when my alternator went out on my car, I got a ride to school, 30 minutes away.”
My fellow teacher caught me off guard, “Your students are not you.”
That comment looped in my mind for days afterwards.
No, my students are not me: one attended drug court every week; a veteran suffered from PTSD; one was rebuilding their life, having left a gang; some suffered from food and housing insecurity. And many were discouraged by their families from even attending community college.
And I thought deadlines were important.
It took some time to puzzle over the rationale for my judgment of students’ abilities to make deadlines. Meanwhile, one student skipped her final conference about her research paper and never submitted the last essay. Even though she’d struggled with the assignments, she was on track to pass the class. I wondered if she had just given up.
I will never know why, for certain. Yet, I wondered that when I didn’t reach out to her after the missed conference, did she presume teachers don’t care about her, that they’re set on penalizing her efforts to better herself? At the beginning of the term, she told me that she’d previously failed English Composition, so she was determined to pass this time. Of course, we expect students to own their decisions — and we should — but I remained convinced that there was more to it than that.
Many of our community college students have been told their whole lives that they aren’t cut out to be college material. So was this student’s failure a sign of self-fulfilling negative prophecy?
Might there be a better way to empower students like her to confront and conquer barriers, internal or external?
Time and again, we see students lacking the tools to navigate the demands of college-level work. I wondered, am I less committed or caring to students who disappoint themselves and me? Surely, not, I thought. But I believe I missed an opportunity. I was deaf to the message the student was sending me in missing her conference and not submitting the final paper. She was stuck; she was overwhelmed; she doubted herself.
Students and I now begin the term by building trust and community. To help them get to know and appreciate each other, they share lived experiences: cultural values, heritage, and how wisdom is passed down in the family, for example. I share the same about myself. This process also generates a sense of caring and that each student matters. I strive to help them see varied identities as assets rather than “less than and unequal.” I’m making my investment in them more visible: by building in flexibility, creating fun activities that build community, using a text app for easy communication, and when students miss something, I reach out to them. These activities help us listen to each other, so, together, we can build critical thinking skills to explore the complexities of divisive issues.
As fall 2020 school terms draw to a close, I encourage educators at all levels, to reflect on how students are doing as a result of our responses to the challenges of learning during CoVid 19. In times of turmoil, it’s comfortable to fall into the path of least resistance. Are we that school principal who decided, when the pandemic hit, that qualifying students may no longer have access to reading and math specialists because it involved too many logistics? Such decisions add to existing inequities and amplify messages that students who need specialized teaching are less deserving than students who do not.
Or are we penalizing students who turn off their cameras? Perhaps they lack adequate technology or are juggling home schooling their kids. Perhaps they are ashamed of their living situation.
Are we the school leader who prohibited teachers who work with at-risk students from meeting them in one-on-one Zoom meetings? Trusting teacher-student relationships are a lifeline. In my experience, students have reached out for help: they have shared being a victim of domestic abuse, disclosed they are living in their car, intimated suicidal ideation. In a time of isolation and uncertainty, the worst thing we can do for students is to close the doors to learning and community, and shut down their voices with damaging edicts.
Though the negative consequences of our pandemic-era choices may be unintentional, we are urgently called to confront the deep cancerous- isms that have metastasized in all educational levels. What can we re-tool to repair what’s not working in the best interests of all students’ education?
S. not wirling in the stormy wilderness of CoVid 19 are tens of thousands of students who lack reliable access to broadband and often learn in isolation because parents cannot work from home. So let us collectively rededicate ourselves to change through education — to do what we do best: refocus our commitment to the well being of our students and ourselves and reinfuse each other with our belief in the power of learning to raise people up. Van Gogh once wrote, “we are not what we once were, we shall not remain what we are now.” It’s not too late to pivot, to renew our commitment to empower students with hope for a new day.
As scientists redouble their efforts to reimagine the possibilities of treating and immunizing against CoVid 19, let us redouble our efforts to disrupt inequities that penalize marginalized students, dismantle structural racism, and close opportunity gaps.
I invite you to reimagine the possibilities for supporting all our students, not based on who we think they are. Let us gather students, teachers, and parents round the virtual table to see and to listen to, and know one another. Let us imagine “what if,” to move beyond “what we once were.”
Resources:
Farmer, G. “Leading in Uncertain Times by Empowering Others: An elementary school administrator is focusing on five leadership skills to engage and empower staff and families this year” (Oct, 2020). edutopia.org
Landscape.Image by https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1315124
Van Gogh, V. (1876). Sermon. http://www.vggallery.com/misc/sermon.htm
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