EDITORIAL

Innovation will be key to a COVID education

Posted 7/16/20

If necessity is the mother of all innovation, we can't help but wonder how innovative our state's school districts will become by the end of this pandemic. School administrators are staring down a July 17 deadline to submit their hypothetical re-opening

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EDITORIAL

Innovation will be key to a COVID education

Posted

If necessity is the mother of all innovation, we can’t help but wonder how innovative our state’s school districts will become by the end of this pandemic.

School administrators are staring down a July 17 deadline to submit their hypothetical re-opening plans – yes, multiple, in order to account for the potentially different realities that students and teachers could be facing on August 31 when schools are set to reconvene.

Will students all be coming back to school together? Will they be split into teams and rotate days in which they can physically come to school? Will the year begin completely remotely and slowly transition back to the classrooms once a vaccine becomes available and the inoculation rate rises? Nobody knows – and as frustrating as it may be for parents and school personnel seeking guidance, neither does the state. 

But it hardly seems fair to blame RIDE at this point for being unable to predict something as unpredictable as a global pandemic. The unfortunate reality is that we’re all navigating this strange new world together, and while it is commonly known that in-person learning exceeds the efficacy of remote learning, it may either not be feasible to perform in-person learning safely, or the cost to do so would far exceed the spending power of municipalities.

The hard questions about full-scale in-person learning pile up at a blistering pace compared to the availability of any quality answers. How will we transport kids to school while observing social distancing? How will students navigate hallways in a full school? How can lunch be safely served? How can teachers be asked to put their lives at risk when many are older and more at risk of suffering the dangerous consequences of contracting COVID-19?

Resigning to the opposite extreme – that all students will have to continue learning remotely – brings up a host of equally difficult queries. How will districts address the inherent equality issues that remote learning creates? How will students make up for all of this lost in-person instruction, which studies are showing has already caused long-term impacts on social-emotional wellness in addition to cognitive development?

But a deadline is a deadline, and so schools will do their best to submit plans that make sense for their communities and their students. It will then be up to the state to decide to what degree they will enforce uniform standards, and to what degree they will allow districts to customize their own approach. It’s a perilously challenging position for Commission Angelica Infante-Green to find herself in while still new to Rhode Island and the long history of educational strife that has permeated our cities and towns.

As with everything else in this crazy current situation we find ourselves in – and yes, we realize there’s only so many times you can hear this before it starts to sound like a broken record – all we can advocate for is continued patience. Situations with clear problems and unclear solutions are frightening by our very nature as creatures that seek comfort in stability. Nothing about this is normal, or stable, and nothing about this is easy. It will likely not be easy for quite some time yet.

But we must continue to support one another and have faith in the leadership that has gotten us this far. Governor Raimondo and her chosen leaders have so far done tremendous work compared to any other state – many of which are experiencing their worst infection rates since the pandemic began. We have to continue to trust in the process, and take the challenges head-on to get through this.

Who knows – maybe this experience will force districts to optimize the traditional educational experience in a way that never would have been proposed during times of normality. Humans often do their best work when backed into a corner, and we remain hopeful that a few renewing sparks of problem-solving creativity could light the way towards a brighter future for our students.

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