The Summer of COVID is almost over and we return to teaching and learning in the Time of COVID. We have exhausted the summer with well-intentioned but conclusionless arguments about whether children should be in-school or at-home learners. Opinion and data have abounded and most schools will implement an in-school and at-home design that fits their local dynamics of economics, politics, and school capacity. Now, it is time to get do rather than talk. It is time to teach.
Never has a teacher been required to know her curriculum more than in the Fall of COVID. Depending upon local COVID data, schooling will shift from in-school to at-home and back again throughout the school year for some if not all children. One day she will be teaching in her classroom and poof! Children and teachers may be quarantined into remote teaching and learning. Where and how she sees her children may be an ever changing landscape. In-class one day and at-home the next. Now more than ever before, quality teaching and learning must be a constant in times of disruption.
Take Away
A teacher’s singular responsibility for the 2020-21 school year will be to cause each child to learn her annual grade level or subject course curriculum regardless of the student’s learning location. This will, of course, be paired with the necessity of every teacher addressing the socio-emotional needs of children in a pandemic world and of families adjusting their work styles and life styles to a return to school. With so many things disrupted and in disarray, a teacher’s clear and sustained knowledge of her curriculum will be the rock upon which we will educate children in 2020-21. The battle cry for teacher’s will be “Know and Teach Your Curriculum”.
What Do We Know?
Disrupted teaching and learning are not new to teachers. Fire drills disrupt classes and hurricanes and blizzards disrupt school weeks. Personal and family illness regularly absent teachers and children from the classroom. A family that takes a prolonged vacation unrelated to school holidays requires modification to the flow of instruction and learning. Within usual disruption, teaching and learning bounces back and returns to its yearly string of school days. These are normal occurrences in the life and times of school.
Pandemic disruption is different.
Teachers with hybrid schedules will have in-person contact with children one or two days per week on a rotating or alternating basis. The other days of the week, teaching and learning will be remote. This is juggling 3 or 4 balls in the air to assure that the teacher equally distributes in person time with all children and, while children are online, they continue to learn independent of the teacher.
Teachers of at-home children will teach a lesson to children with high-speed broadband Internet and with no or inadequate Internet connectivity, with parent support during the school day and without any adult supervision, and to children relying solely on mailed or school delivered packets of lessons. A child’s time on task will be unseen. A child may engage in today’s lesson today, tonight, tomorrow or next week. And, then there is tomorrow’s lesson. This is juggling 20 balls with the understanding that the juggler frequently must pick up dropped balls.
Toss in classroom or school closing when a child or teacher or staff member is exposed to or infected with the virus. Then, all children will become at-home learners. And, teachers will be teaching from home.
Teachers of children in-class and at-home simultaneously need to be be master jugglers. The criteria for master juggling is a mastering of curriculum.
Why Is This Thus?
Disruption and broken strings of school days are facts. Focused teaching and learning are a constant. When reassembling during and after a disruption, a clear knowledge of her curriculum keeps a teacher pointed at the essential knowledge, skills and dispositions that all children must learn. Equal to the national and community concerns about COVID is the national and community worry that children will not be provided the education required for their future. Again, knowledge of curriculum is a teacher’s pathway to educating all children.
To Do
Focus on essential learning. Knowledge of curriculum creates certainty in teaching what must be learned. Every curriculum, every series, and every text provides a broad pathway of learning within which is a critical set of knowledge, skills and dispositions. Knowing your curriculum keeps a teacher focused on what must be learned and allows disruption to shuck off the “it is nice to know”. A teacher without this sound foundational knowledge chases every learning point possible without efficiency or effectiveness.
Focus on exceptional learning needs. Knowledge of curriculum ensures that each child regardless of learning challenges is engaged regardless of location. These are two significant “regardless” issues. Children with IEPs or adaptive learning plans or without English fluency or who are children of various giftedness require modifications of essential curriculum that cause them to achieve and exceed the same outcomes as all other children. These are equity and equality issues that cannot be excused by disruption or child location. A mastery knowledge of curriculum keeps children with exceptional learning needs learning.
Focus on curricular outcomes. Knowledge of curriculum creates deftness in the management of all learners. Children range in their time and place within a unit of study and a knowledgeable teacher, like a shepherd, keeps them all moving in the same direction toward a known and necessary closure of the unit. A teacher without deft management loses children along the way. Deftness and a vigilant moving toward curricular outcomes keeps all children on the pathway to annual success.
Focus on formative assessments. Knowledge of curriculum assures that checking for understanding and assessments of learning are included in every unit regardless of where children are learning. Without this knowledge, it is easy for a teacher to become driven to deliver a quantity of instruction and lose sight of the quality of learning.
Focus on learning modalities. Knowledge of curriculum allows a teacher to shift from high tech to no tech teaching and learning while keeping all children learning. An in-person child and an at-home/on-screen child and an at-home paper and pencil child can all be engaged in the same curricular standards and reaching the same learner outcomes. A knowledgeable teacher works backward from the learning outcomes and builds instruction so that each child regardless of location reaches the same, high quality outcomes.
The Big Duh!
COVID too shall pass. When it does, we will not repeat the 2020-21 school year because some children did not learn their grade level or subject course curriculum. Children will be promoted and graduated with what they learned this year. We are called upon to deliver high quality teaching and learning in unbelievably difficult times. A mastery knowledge of our curriculum is our best resource for succeeding in this responsibility.
And, there is no one else in our nation, state or community who can replace a master teacher.