Students need far far far less guided work right now.

Just Stop: The Kids Will Be Alright. Do Tech Better & Let Them Lead.

First, In the Course of Our Response to All This,
Can Students Get a Better Education?

In particular, our little kids are over-academic-ed compared with other countries that do education better. For real, read The Smartest Kids in the World and NurtureShock and Einstein Never Used Flash Cards and the like and realize that kids come equipped with learning tools, and most need to learn character skills like resilience, grit, and growth mindset to prepare for life-long learning, and listen to Sugata Mitra talk about how kids effectively learn content for themselves with coaching from the cloud.

Second, In the Course of Our Response to All This,
Can Teachers’ Skills and Talents be Better Utilized

If Teachers need to shift into the roles of those coaches that Mitra organized, we luck out since they are even better positioned as learning support with their expert educational training that those coaches didn’t have. Student-led learning is already being leveraged for more engaged and more in-depth studies, and supporting teachers in this shift is the only way to use this educational challenge as an opportunity instead of taking it as a loss.

Relax their state standards.
Stop micromanaging them.
They are educated professionals- let them practice their craft.

But EdTech needs to do a big lift to cut the administrative load of using their tools down by 10x. I’m serious- both for teachers and for the parents/students using them. We’ve been experimenting with systems and integrations and multi-password authentication and whatnot in business for a long time and the only work-able solution still is choosing as much as possible at the ecosystem-level over integrating separate tools. That was buzzwordy. Sorry — just pick one company that gets you most of the way there with all their different functions and use all their stuff and only their stuff. Experiment with maybe one extra stand-alone thing that maybe just came out and is particularly awesome. Like life-changingly-awesome. Like, holey crap, life-changingly-awesome. Otherwise stick with the one platform with “good enough” tools. Administrative time can be and should be tiny, but the reality is enormous and intense and has to change.

This is the part of the shift that can take development hours and whatnot, but simply supporting schools focusing in on one or two platforms would be a huge and quick step to take.

Third, In the Course of Our Response to All This,
Why Can’t The Parent’s Just Take Over-Why is a Shift Necessary?

I say all that to say this about educating our kids:
Parents cannot take this on today.

Parents cannot take this on today,
and us, as a society, have kids who are educationally thriving.

Parents cannot take this on today,
and us, as a society, expect that we aren’t creating bigger problems than we are solving.

School at home during a crisis isn’t the same as regular school, but just at home. Where education coaching has always been a parent’s responsibility on the sidelines, suddenly they’ve been thrown on the field are are expected to do the thing. Instead of all the other things they do for — you know- the family’s food and shelter and whatnot. And homeschooling comparisons aren’t applicable- that is a totally different creature as something a family has evaluated, decided on, and planned for.

Setting aside the workplace chaos caused by the pandemic and inevitable economic effects. Setting aside the mortal fear for their families and inevitable acceptance of loss as people die. Parents are suddenly responsible for child care (making sure the kids are healthy, fed, clean-ish, safe, etc) while they work. Meeting the constant and ever-changing needs of a baby, toddler, or child is not side-work or a hobby. Trying to accomplishing something (like the aforementioned work that provides the food and shelter and whatnot) while also caring for a child can’t be described to someone who hasn’t experienced it with a whole lot of accuracy, but an attempt—

Try writing some code then making a presentation deck for a client and writing an article then participating in a meeting all the while playing that “don’t let the balloon touch the ground game”. Except the balloon is loud and needs emotional connection and where touching it to bounce it up is replaced with things like making lunch, solving social-emotional problems and conflicts, wound care, etc. Keep in mind that this doesn’t ever end. You may stop working, but you legally must continue the balloon game.

Now, add onto that mix a portfolio of work you are to guide a school-aged child through. You must use maybe 5 platforms. Maybe Google Classroom, Think Central, Clever, Xello, and Freckle. And there are multiple google drive shared locations to navigate. Plus Zoom for two daily conference calls with a teacher or group. You are encouraged to use the handbooks for each tool if something doesn’t seem to work.

Now add a totally different portfolio of work using a different set of platforms for kid #2. And for kid #3.

Elementary school teachers will tell you that caring for the child and teaching the child are two vital functions they perform and that doing both services is very hard work that they have developed skills and tools for handling in a classroom setting. And still it’s not always possible to do both effectively.
It is a lot. Teachers do hard work.
There is no replicating it digitally.
We need a shift in how we educate.
Fast.
Now.

Finally, In the Course of Our Response to All This,
Why is Educational Shift Essential for Opportunity and Equity?

I’m going to talk about moms for a minute. My job involves me spending a lot of time studying, communicating with, and understanding moms, and from what I see- this care and education work is falling largely on them.

Setting aside that women also bear the lion’s share of the unpaid community help necessary right now (like running errands for the elderly, getting sick people without transportation to a physician, and organizing efforts to fill unexpected labor and supply needs). Setting aside that in the before-times, women already took on more of people-labor and home-management — the birthday planning and holiday preparations and knowing where stuff is in the house and notes and calls to keep in touch with family and night-time parenting, etc. Setting all that aside and acknowledging that there are always exceptions. Now, whether because of personal choice, apparently random chance, or the reality that men have a greater income potential on average, in large part, fathers are taking on some of this newly added work of care and education and mothers are taking on a ton of it.

In my mom groups, I keep seeing people who are handling their community care, typical family care, new types of family care, work crises, partner issues, and health crises with strength and effectiveness, and some who — quite fairly- are just barely handling anything. But nearly all these mothers who yesterday received a long list of activities and programs and assignments and systems and schedules that they are somehow supposed to manage for their school-aged kids are completely out of time, attention, energy, and anything else to throw at it.
It’s just too much, folks.

I look at moms, because I live and breathe moms, but other inequities have to be getting heavier fast. As the people living in this time, parts of our stories that are impacted by power disparities based in things like poverty, racial bias, and ablism are suddenly going to take bigger hits. Just like being the mom instead of the dad means a bigger hit. And that’s going to bump hard against this laundry list of work to do as we try to awkwardly take extant schooling and translate it into a digital context.

Long after we return to public spaces, the artifact of expectation and comfort with digital platforms will remain.
It will still be that awkward digital translation of conventional education.
It will still require an enormous administrative burden on teachers and parents.
And unless we shift the educational model to those updated methodologies that are valid as online strategies for learners, teachers, and parents, all, it’s going to continue to weigh increasingly on the most already-stretched folks.

My kid is an easy kid at an easy age, and I have a partner who supports my career. I’m a very chill person who thrives in harsh light. But my 5 year old missed his 9:15 am conference call AGAIN because I needed to work, my partner needed to work, and it was going to require a lot more that I had to offer at that moment to make pants happen for this kid. He is, generally, opposed to the concept. Especially in our house. So, I feel bad. Sorry to our awesome teachers at our awesome pre-school. It’s probably going to happen tomorrow too. If we ever have a stay-at-home order when my child is school-aged, I’m pretty sure I’d have to head for international waters or something to get out of all this.

Hopefully, we’ll see the educational shift we’ve been building to and poised for that is desperately needed now.

Let children own and direct their education.
Let teachers rock their coaching role.
Let parents rock their coaching role.
Force a heavy tech lift on administrative burden.
Leverage this shift — seize this moment — and let’s do better, not worse.