We asked nearly 200 teachers to interview their (~4000) students about this past year and their hopes for next year. Then, we asked them what they planned to do differently next year as a result. This is some of what they said: π§΅
"All students were proud of something. I need to make more space for students to share what they are proud of."
"I have to stop thinking of community building as one 'unit' at the beginning that I rush through, and how community can play a much larger, systemic, role in my classroom."
"I hope adults keep that student voice/student choice/student autonomy at the front of their planning. Kids thrive when adults respect their individualized needs and choices."
"I will be advocating... to have longer passing times, and for our school to rethink bathroom, food, & water policies. (Are we really going to go from a year+ of students being independent with this stuff, to going back to asking permission to do a normal bodily function?!?)"
"Using the chat, or some version of it, to communicate with students privately and quickly while keeping class flowing. Having parent conferences via zoom to reduce travel time and stress on families. Continuing to accept all late work for full credit."
"we want to advocate for a longer shared office hours time, more breaks in the day, more alternative assessments, more understanding from teachers and flexibility on late assignments, and ideally a later start time."
"I am thinking about next year and how we make it as comfortable and healing as possible for students. I really don't want to have "urgency" for next year: I'm thinking more about how to give students time to process things, to connect with each other, and enjoy time."
"Seeing as how popular the idea of getting a longer break between classes is, I could see this continuing to happen when we return to school"
"We have to figure out how to make our schools more human. We have to."
"They need opportunities to socialize and interact with each more, preferably in real life if possible."
"'- More reading days ( free period) for students to destress/ work on assignments"
"I really think we need to increase the amount of time we let kids interact with each other freely and socialize, like a longer recess, or an extra recess."
"I will advocate for democratic meetings about rules. Have students at the table. Present the science. Come up with guidelines together. This top down approach isn't working, either for students or faculty."
"When the situation became more and more complex, we needed to work WITH students rather than FOR them."
"Near the start of the pandemic I posted lots of videos showing how to do different karate moves, and those have been helping students so we'll leave them posted where students can find them."
"I know that I am a "loose organizer" in my practice, but students appreciated the extra efforts I (and other teachers) made to make sure everything was clearly posted(they love agendas -always been a fan myself) and explained, so I will make that a bigger priority
"Continuing to bring student voice to the table when it comes to decisions about school that affect students... We have created a student innovation team, who will continue to unpack our data and inform decisions for next year."
"Biggest thing is definitely the need for more breaks, opportunities to move, and the ability for students to work at their own pace. I want to provide that for my students."
"The problems we have seen clearly during the pandemic existed in full before anyone ever heard the term COVID-19. We were unwilling to do the difficult work to address those problems then, and now far too many [ppl] are acting as if these problems were caused by the pandemic."
"I hope that we treasure the connections we can make with one another as human beings living in the same space."
"[Students] feel like they rely on teachers to do the hard work for them; to give the nod of approval before they embark on an academic challenge. Because students were simply forced to try on their own more, they felt like they were working harder. This gave me pause."
"I will try to have even more empathy as I understand them better, and I would try to make my lessons with more humor."
"I've always known that relationships and hands-on learning were important, but I didn't know just how vital until we couldn't work that way. These kinds of interactions cannot be replaced with technology."
"Moving forward, Iβve learned that itβs not important to give so many assignments, or to grade EVERY single assignment. I want to move my classroom from the traditional grading system to a more competency based grading system."
"In my own classroom, I plan to include a 3 min stretch break in the middle of class even when we go back to full time in person!"
"Advocating for change - I hope to advocate for a more humane "recovery" than the "acceleration academy" focused on "credit recovery" or boosting standardized test skills that we often offer. Students need healing more than they need test prep."
"I will strive to stay patient (which I read as being responsive to what students are experiencing outside of the academics of school) - I will advocate for the things my students have voiced."
"I might want to advocate for one day out of the week being changed to asynchronous or even consistently being a half day. I will try to have less screen time for my students and give them more opportunities to learn collaboratively with their peers."
If we can be flexible it would be great to reevaluate the # of hours that in-person learning needs to take place, especially for 11th and 12th graders. Especially, if we are trying to best prepare our students for college it's CRITICAL that we allow them to have independent work
"Two that really stood out to me were in response to what students were most proud of. Learning how to cook/more time with family makes me wonder how we can involve families more with the learning that happens inside and outside of school." 1/2
"Learning Resiliency/Independence reminded me that sometimes not being there to hold students hands can give them the space they need to learn and work through challenges on their own and build these skills." 2/2
If you want to ask these questions to your own students and do your own reflecting as an educator or with your colleagues, all of the prompts and resources are here:
docs.google.com
docs.google.com
If you want some snippets of what students said, you can read here:
I'm not 100% through all of the data, but as far as I can tell, not a single teacher has answered "Next year, I plan to use state assessment data to tailor instruction to remediate content gaps from 2020-21." 1/3
The national/state policy narrative of "testing for learning loss then tutoring to remediate" appears to have almost zero salience to students and teachers in the field; after months of opeds, policy writing, funding in the stimulus bills etc. 2/3
It's seems like if teachers talk to students about their needs and then reflect on their plans for next year, and it sounds nothing like what policymakers are talking about, maybe it would be worth revisiting whether those policy efforts are really capturing students needs. 3/3
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