The Pandemic As a Disclosing Tablet

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

When I was a child, my dentist would give me a tablet to chew on that would turn the plaque a bright purple color. These “disclosing tablets” were helpful in showing kids how to brush their teeth better. The pills tasted horrible, the sight of purple teeth was ugly and the truth about how badly or infrequently I was brushing my teeth was embarrassing. The pandemic has been a disclosing tablet, revealing all the areas that we have left neglected. This realization is not pleasant, the truths we are discovering are ugly and admitting our ignorance and neglect is embarrassing. But much in the same way, this experience can be used to make changes, changes that can go beyond the current moment and help restructure our communities for the better.

When our one week Spring Break turned into two and then gradually led to online learning, many of the imperfections and inequities in teaching, learning and the role schools play were exposed. On one end I had students who wanted to learn, whose parents relied on me to provide the education that they themselves had not been able to receive, but had no devices or access to the internet. Despite these hardships, I held many phone conversations with these families and sent and received assignments via pictures texted back and forth.Then there were those students who were so accustomed to extrinsic motivation that they did not want to and in many cases did not engage with learning that was more open-ended and drew on their interests and self-direction. These extrinsic motivations, that I would argue interfere with learning whether in person or virtual, are such things as grades, the social recognition of having the right answer and the thrill of pleasing the teacher - all reduced or non-existent in our online setting. 

Now as we look to start a new school year we are grappling how to best do it. Unfortunately, instead of coming together as a community to make a collective decision, we have once again taken sides: parents vs. teachers, teachers vs. administrators, districts vs. State governing bodies. But collective decision making is more than everyone speaking their point of view and wanting to be heard, more than different interests bargaining to get as much of their agenda pushed forward. Collective decision making is everyone - families, teachers, businesses - coming together to search for a solution, to construct a reality where everyone prospers. 

Two areas where the pandemic has exposed the faults in our system are 1) the role schools have come to take on as quality, reliable and low cost child-care and 2) the nature of parent-student-teacher collaboration.

Schools have become the default childcare for children after the age of five. School calendars are not always designed to meet the best interests of students, but those of the grownups. As we try to decide when and how to reopen schools we have to ask ourselves are we driven by the need to have child care or do we really need the expertise of the teachers? We need both, no doubt. It has been a blessing that we have been able to provide quality child care and academic learning in the same building for so long, but right now we have to separate the two if we want to come up with a solution that is safe and viable for everyone. And the best solution is found when the community - parents, employers, and educators - come to the table to talk with each other and not at each other. 

One of the high points of the spring virtual learning was the opportunity for me to communicate more frequently and more personally with the parents of my students. As a parent myself I empathize with the challenge of guiding our own children through their academic learning. The parent-child dynamic is very different from the teacher-child dynamic. When frustrated, my child will not hesitate to show me how he or she feels; tears and tantrums come much easier in the safety of the home with adults that have proven to love unconditionally. Children need and have always needed a partnership between the adults that guide their learning. Our current reality is offering us an opportunity to learn about what a true collaboration between home and school could look like. 

The root of everything we complain about can be traced back to education. This is our chance to rethink everything. If we want to honor the lives lost and the sacrifices made by doctors, nurses, custodians and others in the front line of the fight against this disease, the least we can do is pay attention where our longstanding shortcomings are being disclosed and not lose the opportunity to come together as communities to build a better normal.