He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
—Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
The southeastern coastal areas of the United States succumb to hurricanes on a regular basis, which can force school closures, liberating learners from the prison cells of their classrooms to splash in the receding water with their friends. In Houston, hurricanes shut the city down more than any other form of disaster. Yes, we have plant explosions and the occasional tornado, but hurricanes bring Houstonians to our knees. Grocery stores and gas stations get emptied. Most people are at home with no electricity, cooking fish sticks on camp stoves, desperate to make it through all the formerly frozen food before it turns rancid.
During hurricanes and their aftermath, schools don’t worry much about on-going education needs, knowing the disaster is (usually) short term and students will be returning in a matter of days; a week at the most. In 2017, Houston was knocked a colossal blow by Hurricane Harvey, putting a full one-third of the Houston region under water for more than two weeks. Schools and businesses were closed—there was no way to get there—most residents couldn’t depart their driveways as the streets were waist-deep in flood water. There were no school lessons to be delivered through online courses, no packets to exchange, no emails with instruction, no Skype, no Zoom, nor other conference calling for the purpose of continuing the learning process.
When students returned to school a few weeks later, instruction was light with no urgency to make up for the loss of time, as many of the students had already suffered loss—their homes, their clothes, their belongings, in some cases pets, in other cases, loved ones. As teachers, it is an unwritten part of our job description to care for these students, with outpourings of compassion, kindness, and understanding. Many teachers tossed their curriculum outlines aside, called it a year, and spent the rest of the semester with light, Disneyesque distractions that required little pondering of the situation in which the students found themselves and their families. And students slowly thrived again.
We teachers felt the concussion of those decisions reverberate the following August when our students returned and there was much more reteaching needed to get kids back to where they needed to be after summer vacation than in previous years. Then it hit us. There wasn’t as much instruction the previous year.
This year the coronavirus, and its related Covid-19, have shut down schools, probably for the remainder of the school year. Staying at home, under self-, prescribed, or legislated quarantine, our students are missing daily instruction in the classroom, high-stakes state tests, Advanced Placement exams, college entrance exams, final exams; our seniors are also missing Prom, the yearbook, awards ceremonies, college signing days, and Graduation.
What students are not missing out on this year is on-going learning. Because electricity hasn’t been knocked out, and phone lines are still up, teachers and students are still able to assign and complete authentic schoolwork during quarantine. Using technology solutions, teachers are connecting with students in new and some could say better ways. Assignments are more creative, open, and student-centered. Some teachers are pushing the envelope and helping students design big-picture projects that explore areas of that particular student’s curiosity; other teachers are feeling liberated from the concept of classroom management and the requirement to be “in charge” and maintain discipline. With yellowed lesson plans stuck in file drawers back in the classroom, and less need for chairs in rows and hands being raised, teachers are recreating their own way of teaching, and embracing the freedom of empowering their students to learn for themselves. A world geography teacher sets up a different location in his back yard each week and sends video messages from “Hawaii” (a beach towel and surf board in his kids’ sandbox complete with umbrella and luau music) or “Paris” (a borrowed bistro table and chair on his back patio, a beret, a cup of coffee, and Edith Piaff singing La Vie en Rose in the background), along with assignments for his students to explore these locations through online resources, to learn everything they can—sights, history, culture, products, etc,—and share with their classmates on a discussion board hosted in the school’s online learning environment.
In fact, many teachers are finding school outside of school (I’m intentionally not using the term “homeschooling” here) more engaging for their students and for themselves. This raises the question about how we think of school. While the school is a physical construction, does school need to be conducted inside a building dedicated to this purpose? With more relevant and student-centered learning, can we begin to think of school as a collection of learning experiences, designed by the learner and supported by the instructor? Can we ask “What do our students think is most important to learn?” Some literature teachers are asking their students to write a graduation speech for their graduating class, as though they had been asked to speak. What would they say to their classmates? What is the most important wisdom they could pass on to their friends?
There is much controversy surrounding the policies and politics of educating our next generation. I wonder if we are looking at this from the wrong end of the tunnel. Perhaps now is the time, when we have been provided an opportunity to glimpse a different possibility of learning, to see beyond the recursion of our own secondary school lessons. Perhaps now, in this time of coronavirus, we have safely seen a future of learning where creativity, curiosity, and student-centered direction are a part of the learning process and not apart from it.