I am concerned for our students and teachers during this stressful time of Covid 19. As an educator, I know how students lose some gains just from summer break. Now that many have been home learning for ten months, I can’t imagine the level of concern from the educators, parents, and children right now. No matter how hard most districts try to make the experience equitable, it just isn’t in my opinion. Students, regardless of race and ethnicity, come from different homes where resources are either abundant or limited. Wifi is easier to get in some areas than in others. Parents and children cannot help if they live out in the boondocks where using a cell phone is difficult, much less a computer that sometimes must be shared by multiple children.

This blog isn’t meant to depress you or to shed light on what I think would make it better, but it is meant to shed light on some ways that teachers, parents, and children can accelerate the learning…to learn more at a quicker rate…if the gains are going to happen. A year is a long time even with the onsite, at home, hybrid methods that are being used. Teachers that I know are working harder that ever. Most parents want to help, but sometimes have no idea how, or they have jobs that they need if they are going to have the money to provide for their families.

What I suggest here is research-based and tried by me and many other educators. Try as many strategies as you can and as often as you can to help your students and/or children recapture any learning that has been lost. Together we can do this.

Write, write, write.

Build self-confidence.

Take notes with a pen and paper, not with the computer.

Connect the learning with what is already known.

Read about a topic. Write about it. Watch or create a video about it. Listen to a podcast about it.

Say aloud the info you are learning. Read it. Write it. Say it.

Discuss it.

Role-play an event from history.

Make up a game to review the information.

Exercise since exercising improves memory.

Hydrate. Drink lots of water.

Get rest.

Teach the information to someone else like a sibling.

Take lots of field trips. If you can’t physically go places, the internet has virtual trips.

Cook. Have students do fractions by using recipes.

Have students measure rooms to see how much flooring would be needed. Use real life activities.

Keep a journal.

More to come…

Ok, I am not a scientist, but I am an educator with forty years of experience. I have seen thousands of children from all walks of life succeed and some struggle. That being said, I want to go on record proclaiming that keeping schools closed at this point in the COVID crisis is doing harm to all children, but more so to the children that are already behind and have spent their lives trying to catch up. Those children come from all backgrounds, especially from poor communities .

I watch the government right now making decisions that benefit no one, at least no one I know, and ignoring our children and teachers. Why should a union decide when a school is opened? What happened to making decisions based on science? Let’s look at the schools that have opened and their success. Yes, occasionally, there have been times schools have had to close again for a little while or have had pockets of students and teachers quarantine, but on the whole, success has prevailed.

The Bible says “people perish for lack of knowledge.” Almost an entire year has passed. Many children have committed suicide. Some children are living in horrific home environments. Some children are hungry. This does not make sense based on what “science” is really saying. What is the real reason that many of our children, our future, are still at home? Most of these children are trying, along with the educators and parents, to make the best of this awful situation, but I think it is a travesty that we are using children as pawns in a game that I, frankly, am sick of playing.

Open the schools. All the schools.