Learning In Uncertain Times
What is on the minds of young people as they return to school in this age of Covid-19 and widespread racial reckonings?
During Summer 2020, The Reinvention Lab — powered by Teach For America — assembled a diverse coalition of 12 young people from across the country to take part in the Enduring Ideas Fellowship. The fellowship was an exploration into what it takes for adults in education nonprofits to truly co-create alongside young people. Fellows met daily during the week, went through a series of design thinking processes, participated in a grantmaking process to fund organizations who are deeply invested in the future of learning, and presented their findings from their fellowship experience — grantmaking, design thinking, collaboration across geographical and educational contexts — to various adult stakeholders in education.
Early in their fellowship, the fellows conducted over 80 empathy interviews with their peers, intended to give a lens into what students need in this rapidly shifting educational landscape. During a summer of a worldwide pandemic and the hypervisibility of police violence and racial protests, it should matter to decision-makers at all levels of the education system that we are hearing from those who don’t always have the mic, or the power. The range of who fellows chose to interview was broad — in identity, location, age, class, and race. According to fellow Amia, a 12th grader in Rosebud, South Dakota, “We all had very different stories of things we’ve been through and we’ve been treated very differently.” But across this breadth of experience, they found cohesion. Fellow Syedah, a college sophomore in Washington, D.C., said on one of their calls, “Despite us being all from different parts of the country and having different upbringings… a lot of us had overlapping perspectives and experiences.” At the Lab, we wonder if realizations like this one are glimmers towards a future of learning, in which young people can come together across fractures, differences, and cultures to learn about and alongside one another.
After conducting these interviews, fellows went through a process of distilling their interviews into themes, and four clear insights emerged. These insights are intended to give voice to the needs and feelings of young people from across the country as we re-imagine what learning can be. They are intended for educators and other stakeholders in young people’s learning to critically examine their practices and the ways they align (or don’t) to what young people are saying they need.
These are the fellows’ insights, described first in their words then elucidated through their experiences.
Insight 1: The intensity of mental health
“Ongoing, superficial check-ins are not enough. Students need the power to choose to engage in the relationships and resources that support students when feeling isolation, stress, and anxiety. General “check-in’s” have been a helpful COVID strategy for schools, but as the trauma and time of the pandemic increases, there is a need to re-think how to attend to deeper student needs. We (students) want and need to choose who to share our experiences with beyond the typical teacher-student check-in. Other mental health resources might be needed if teachers struggle to access and address our needs. Sometimes it simply feels like a performative action. “
Maliyah, an 11th grade fellow from Tucson, AZ, missed a day of class to attend an extracurricular opportunity. Her teacher immediately emailed her mom, in what Maliyah describes as a “scare tactic” instead of coming to her student and seeing how she’s doing. Maliyah used to get straight A’s, and consistently performed well academically. It’s just harder at school. “I’m just still trying to wrap my brain around school, politics, everything that’s going on. Teachers haven’t been noticing that.” But Maliyah clarifies that it’s not all teachers — her chemistry instructor is always talking about her students’ mental health and genuinely checking in on them. “She’s one of the highlights of my day,” Maliyah says. “It helps just knowing there are people out there looking out for students.”
Khaliha, a 10th grade fellow from San Antonio, Texas, talks about the toll the pandemic has taken on her mental and emotional health. “My social calendar is very empty,” she tells me. “All me and my friends do is schoolwork. We may talk for two minutes between classes, but I don’t have that outlet in the way I usually do.” During the normal school day, Khaliha fondly recalls checking in with friends during each transition period, having time to talk and collaborate in class during independent practice, the flexibility and relational space of elective periods, spending lunch all together as a casual time to connect both with peers and teachers. Now, there are few face to face interactions with teachers and friends. Khaliha has shared this insight with her teachers, and admits that they’re trying to implement what she has shared, albeit imperfectly. They are connecting one on one through private chat, old teachers checking up on her. “Better imperfect than nothing,” Khaliha says. “But I could use even a little bit more.”
Insight 1 Bottom Line: How might schools give students the power to choose to engage in relationships that support their mental health?
Insight 2: Double agents
“Students are not only students at this moment. Schools need to account for these many hats and work with students to develop multiple pathways to make school responsive and feasible. Like adults, many of us are juggling additional responsibilities at home (working, taking care of siblings, teaching siblings, caring for family members.) Schools need to find ways to be responsive to these roles, while keeping learning and school relevant and meaningful.”
Rosie, a 12th grade fellow from Denver, Colorado, has always been a top student and is still motivated to go to college. But when her grandmother stopped working because of COVID, Rosie had to get a job to help with family income, as many students her age had to do. So she was working during the day and doing school work at night. Since teacher office hours were during the day and they were initially inflexible with due dates for assignments, Rosie started to fall behind for the first time in her academic career.
Similarly, Haley, a college freshman fellow from Denver, Colorado, is balancing being a first generation college student struggling with her own virtual learning experience and mental health. At the same time, she is responsible for her little brother’s virtual education since her parents don’t speak the language and are working during the school day. Students like Haley, Rosie, and their peers are busy, and they are tired. An acknowledgment of this reality and flexibility on the part of schools and systems goes a long way in remedying the realities our young people are facing as “double agents” in this era of uncertainty.
Insight 2 Bottom Line: How might schools work with students to develop multiple pathways to make school responsive and feasible?
Insight 3: Identity is our lens; time’s up
“Youth tolerance for inequity and whitewashing of history and life experiences have grown short. Students are coming back to school seeking accountability to ensure race and equity are a part of curriculum and conversation. We will no longer tolerate the absence of conversations about identity. We need to talk about what’s happening in our society right now; we need to talk about how it impacts us, and we need to learn deeply about different histories. While this may show up for us differently in different communities, we feel really “on the hook” to hold our school systems accountable. From curriculum to discipline, we have witnessed and internalized the inequities of the school system. Our country’s reawakening to racial injustice has shown us that we don’t have to be silent or complicit in these inequities. Schools need to take direct action to address inequities, specifically in curriculum, microaggressions, and discipline practices that deepen inequity.“
The solution to this insight is more complex than it appears on the surface. We can’t solve for it simply by offering a diversity of types of history courses, though this may be part of the solution. But Maliyah’s school has a lot of different history courses: Latinx, Indigenous, Black. Even with courses like these, she has a white teacher who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be in the shoes of students of color, and students who are hesitant to approach complex issues without the guidance of an instructor with deep understanding.
And virtual learning has served to widen some of these chasms. Maliyah says, “Through Zoom there’s heightened racial tension. My English teacher was reading The Great Gatsby to us; he’s a white guy talking about the 1920s, and he told us, ‘It wasn’t that bad of a time, women got the right to vote!’ It was on me to correct him: only white women got right to vote. It’s strange correcting your teacher on basic history.” Moments like this show that there is additional capacity that needs to be systematically built into schools and districts to better prepare teachers to facilitate learning around complex topics, not simply offer courses that touch on a diversity of histories. Another struggle of holding the lens of identity in a virtual space, Maliyah has noticed, is that people feel comfortable to say whatever they want from behind their screens, and it’s much harder to hold peers accountable.
Insight 3 Bottom Line: How might we hold each other accountable to ensuring race and equity are a regular part of our conversations AND curriculum at school?
Insight 4: Zoom doom
“Online learning has exposed the lack of relevance and student ownership in the current education system; students see this facade and deeply desire more meaningful and joyful learning. We are all experiencing some version of virtual learning, however, we don’t feel connected to one another or see the importance of the topics we are learning about. And quite simply, we are not having fun doing it. The “rules of the game” (go to school, work hard, graduate, and get a good job) have come into question during the pandemic, yet the pandemic has also magnified the stability that comes from many jobs that require higher education. We see the importance of school, but are growing increasingly tired of trying to get to that goal through compliance-based online assignments. There is an opportunity to rethink student success and learning to keep us inspired toward the bigger goal.”
“What do you hear most in a day of online learning?” we ask Maliyah as we reflect on this insight. She doesn’t skip a beat in responding, “Teachers insisting, ‘If your camera isn’t on I’ll kick you off.’” And it isn’t just in her high school classrooms. Her little sister is in first grade, and Maliyah notes that her teacher is “really harsh on her.” She is online with her class from 8:30–1:30, and is not allowed to have her camera or microphone on. Maliyah has listened in on her little sister’s classes, and when a student struggles with the microphone or camera, they’re getting punished rather than helped. “It looks like we’re having listening issues. Do we need to dock points?” she heard a teacher ask a first grader.
Khaliha has had a similar experience to Maliyah and her sister. School starts around 8 o’clock, there’s an extended lunch break, and then class ends around 4:50. She sits at the computer this entire time, with the exception of the lunch break. Many of her classmates don’t have their cameras on, so she spends each class period looking at a screen of little black squares. Teachers talk for whole 60 minute class periods. There are very few opportunities for students to engage besides typing in chat, filling out a worksheet, or coming off mute to answer a question.
There are some little things her teachers have done that mitigate this sense of doom, even if just a bit. Some are sitting at their desk in their actual classroom. Khaliha’s P.E. instructor is in the gym. She recognizes that her teachers are trying to make it feel more normalized. She wishes more teachers would take steps like this, and then even larger ones. That they would ask themselves if the lessons are engaging on a virtual platform, if the amount of work they’re giving students is realistic and reasonable. This is a time unlike we’ve ever lived before, so it’s okay to reimagine teaching differently than it’s been done before, too.
Insight 4 Bottom Line: How might schools rethink student success and learning to keep them inspired toward the bigger goal?
These insights are a springboard into what learning can shapeshift into at a time that is unlike anything learners have lived through before. It is a profound act of love and service for teachers, schools, districts, educators, policymakers to think differently about school in this moment. Young people don’t just want change, they need it. Our world is changing shape and they are navigating it with grace, clarity, moments of fear, and a profound powerlessness all at once. It is on all of us to re-think what it means to show up for them, to co-create learning experiences that meet them where they are, and that evolve into a future of learning that is equitable and responsive. This moment asks adults to go beyond conversations around the nuts and bolts of learning loss and adapting to virtual learning. It asks us to shift the tone of these conversations about reimagining learning in a way that invites the nuance and proximity of young people’s perspectives. Addressing these issues fellows raised is not simply a means to an academic end, but a move towards ensuring our young people’s mental, emotional, and educational futures are protected.
All illustrations were created by Enduring Ideas Fellows Rosie M., Maliyah W., and Gilayah M.
