Do Better Schools Lie Ahead in a Post Covid-19 World?

Do BETTER Schools Lie Ahead in a Post-Covid-19 World?? 🤔

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't think our kids and teachers need to be traumatized in our post Covid classrooms!

Learning may not be as CONVENIENT or COMFORTABLE as we can imagine right now but were our classrooms very safe and comfortable before Covid-19? 🤷‍♀️

As a substitute teacher, I can honestly tell you I was EXTREMELY traumatized by what I saw in some of our classrooms and brought to tears by TRAUMATIZED KIDS who struggled to stay engaged, AWAKE, keep their hands off other children, and keep themselves from finding excuses to leave the classrooms. 😢

And I know many educators around our country share my feelings and that's why we have seen an alarming MASS EXODUS from the education profession in the past few years.

In fact, many of us are out here advocating EVERY day in our community...shedding BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS for what we have personally witnessed and experienced in our school system that has been VERY TRAUMATIZING to ourselves, our kids and our families!

Things like...

* 8 suicides in our high schools in 10 years and MANY more attempts coinciding with a DIRE global mental health crisis impacting many of our students and educators.

* A failure to adequately recognize and support our Special Needs children and an ongoing effort and tax payer $$$s used to PUSH THOSE KIDS OUT of our system!

* Ongoing threat of school violence!!

* Overcrowded schools with less than ideal sanitation!!

* Underpaid, highly-skilled teachers forced to work 2 JOBS to live in the town in which they work! 😡

* An OUTDATED curriculum built around testing that does little to prepare our kids for this GLOBALIZIED, TUMULTUOUS, FAST-CHANGING World that is at risk for pandemics!!

* RAMPANT GRADE INFLATION and former teachers admitting they were forced to LIE to parents or risk losing their jobs!

* Educators, parents and kids who are NOT EMPOWERED to HAVE A VOICE or BE INNOVATIVE and forced to live with a FEAR OF RETALIATION and job loss if they speak up for WHAT IS RIGHT for our kids and future!!

This is what I and many parent and advocate friends have found VERY traumatizing in our local schools and current education system and, add to this, the threat of a DEADLY, VERY CONTAGEOUS VIRUS, and I don't want to go back! And I won't send my kids back!

But I think there IS an opportunity to create BETTER learning environments than what we had before minus some social distancing that, God willing, will only be with us for the short-term if we can all do our part to help eradicate this virus!🙏

But what we need to do is OPEN OUR MINDS to what is POSSIBLE, step back far enough from the idea of school that we've been clinging to that has been OUTDATED and INNEFFECTIVE for MANY, MANY years and embrace a NEW MODEL!

One that is BETTER for our kids, our families, our communities and our FUTURE!! 🌎