Enough of the complaining about learning loss! Our children will be okay. Our second-hand adult worry about what children did not learn in the covid school years ignores the realities of the first-hand teaching and learning that successfully brought children back into school life that is preparing them for their future.
I watch the traditions of September unfold in our local school. The school website shared faces and names of new teachers; each brimmed with excitement for their new school home. Elementary grade newsletters shared information about the start of the school calendar so parents could plan ahead and be prepared. Banners in the school yard welcomed children to the “23-24 year of learning”. Our school celebrates the beginning of a new school year with all the excitement it deserves.
Athletic seasons give secondary students a quick blast of school in late August. Football, boys’ soccer, girls’ volleyball, and both cross country teams practice and have their first competitions before the first day of classes. There is a special strut to teams on the first day of school who already have wins in games, matches, and races. Cockiness, maybe. Pride, assuredly.
It is against this reality of September and a new school year that discussion of past learning loss needs to be put in a proper context. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “School is as school does”. Our local school is active and forward-leaning. It is known1 widely as offering a private education of small class sizes and maximum opportunities in a public-school setting. Few, if any children in our school, look backward worrying about what did or did not happen in recent years. They, their teachers, and their school start new learning in September based upon each child’s “readiness to learn” assessments and focused new instruction. Forward leaning for forward learning.
In hindsight, life and learning took hits from the disruptions of pandemic mitigations. Every child now in school will have lifelong memories and stories to tell about when schools were closed, and classes were zoomed. They will talk of being quarantined and wearing masks, even in their sports. They may tell stories of what they did while not in school or how they played hooky and “unplugged” from zoomed classes. What they will not talk about is what they did not learn due to the pandemic because it will be have been inconsequential in the big picture.
We are two school years-plus past those events: two school years of renewed schooling. The swarm of academics, activities, arts, and athletics of school life embraced children on their first days back in their re-opened schools and few children ever looked back. Adults, on the other hand, gather their worry beads and fume about lost learning.
Stop worrying and get in step with your children or grandchildren and their 23-24 school year. For them, every day brings something new to learn and do and they are growing their learning not from what they missed or lost but from what they know and can do. It is our proper role to assist them as we can and as they will let us. Children are all about today and tomorrow; let’s join them and start moving forward.