Back to Classrooms and the Glass Half Full... or Half Empty
/a guest post by Leslie Rosales
(originally posted to her website on August 11, 2022)
Conocimos a Leslie por primera vez cuando estábamos apoyando al proyecto Leer y Aprender en Guatemala. Este proyecto financiado por USAID fue dirigido por Juárez y Asociados. SIL LEAD fue contratado para brindar capacitación en el desarrollo de libros con Bloom. La estantería resultante en la Biblioteca Bloom actualmente tiene más de 600 libros en español, mam, k'iche', lengua de señas guatemalteca y otros idiomas guatemaltecos. Le pedimos a Leslie si podíamos compartir un artículo reciente que publicó. Es tan útil como poderoso y creemos que lo apreciarán. Para ver su artículo original (en español) puede ir a su página web.
As teachers and students confined to their homes in 2020 and 2021, we thought that the solution to our frustrations would come the day we could get back into the classroom. In this, we were so naïve. Don’t misinterpret me as a negative, “half empty” person, though. This is just reality.
The latest report on learning poverty, The State of Global Learning Poverty, estimated that 57% of the world's ten-year-olds could not comprehend age-appropriate text before the pandemic. Similarly, in 2014, approximately one in two third-grade children in my country of Guatemala could not read with comprehension. In 2022, it is estimated that the number of children who do not comprehend what they read will reach 70% of ten-year-olds worldwide, including in Guatemala. In addition, the gap between children with opportunities and children without them has widened enormously in my country. That is, parents who were able and willing to invest in their children's education were far fewer than most parents in Guatemala.
While this is consistent with what I’ve seen as an educator in my own country, it has clearly happened worldwide—even in exceptionally wealthy countries such as the United States, where studies have shown that the pandemic likewise widened inequalities.
This growing inequality is reflected in the enormous variability of experience as children return to their classrooms, having had vastly different opportunities to learn, as well as very different experiences with COVID-19.
Some parents and schools were able to pivot and work out the technological aspect of distance education, but many were not. Furthermore, the challenges of remote teaching showed the strengths and weaknesses of many teachers, and many parents lost their jobs and had to prioritize survival over education. Children lost parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and teachers because of COVID.
In short, we find ourselves back in school after two years in which a whole lot has happened to and around our students, leaving us with many questions. For example:
· What are our expectations of the children we receive?
· What are our expectations of the teachers?
· What are the expectations of the parents?
· What is our plan to recover children with poor reading, mathematics, and socio-emotional skills?
I have personally always believed that principals and teachers have an enormous power to change a child's life. But what about children who will not return to school? What about children who are confronted with their inability to perform the tasks expected at the grade level to which they return and decide, as a result, to drop out?
As difficult as these questions may be, going back to school does seem to be the best scenario. In school, we can answer these questions and decide to do something about them.
The State of Global Learning Poverty report argues that we now face a learning recovery and acceleration period. Recovery means bringing students up to speed, and acceleration means hurrying up because we will not make up for the time we lost. The report is clear that learning recovery and acceleration require at least these five actions:
Get kids back in schools and keep them there. The reopening of schools allows us to recover and accelerate learning. So, the first step is to get kids back in the classroom. The second step is to keep them there. This requires using school data (for example, 2019 enrollment) to determine which students should return to which grade in 2022 in order to take decisive action to help students recover. Likewise, it is crucial to collect data on absent students to prevent further dropouts.
Assess learning periodically, BUT for FORMATIVE purposes. After two lost years, the purpose of assessment cannot be to merely show the obvious—that children have not learned as much as they would have. In this time of recovery, it is essential to assess to determine the specifics of what our students have not learned, and to use the information to plan instruction. In other words, the purpose of assessment is to provide feedback for continuing learning, instead of GRADING to pass or fail. We can't waste any more years, nor any more grades.
Prioritize basic skills. If we cannot recover or accelerate learning in all learning subjects, we must at least get children to read with comprehension, develop their math skills, and be able to communicate in writing. Strengthening these skills will allow them to accelerate further learning, moving forward.
Increase the efficiency of instruction. Teachers must become more efficient in developing skills because we have already lost so much time. We must train teachers to use evidence-based methodologies to accelerate learning. We cannot wait two or three years for a child to learn basic skills like how to read fluently, learn another language, and communicate in writing.
Develop the health and socioemotional well-being of children and teachers. This will be critical to keeping kids in school and getting them through this pandemic era as resiliently as possible.
The five steps above require a serious commitment.
No matter how much we have done these past two years, all children, including my own, have missed learning opportunities.
On a personal note, my husband and I were determined that our children would not stop learning during 2020 and 2021. First of all, we kept them in virtual school. We invested in the necessary technology for them to receive online classes, became their mentors, and made ourselves available 24/7. We also bought books on how to improve our mentoring efforts—especially for basic skills such as math, reading, and writing. We also relied on a tutor, I had my bubble of moms in the same situation to reinforce my children's social skills, and we did what was necessary to keep up our children's sports training. All of this meant an increase of about 30% in our family’s education budget during the pandemic—which in turn meant cutting expenses in other areas.
And guess what?
As our children go back to school, they still face what most of the world's children are facing. Among others:
learning poverty,
demotivation, and
challenges in relating socially to their peers.
Our family's investment and commitment were not enough to completely spare them the challenges of returning to the classroom, and I suspect that this is because it was not about investing to keep doing the same thing, but about doing things differently.
We cannot keep doing the same things we’ve been doing and expect different results. So this publication is a plea for a commitment to learning recovery and acceleration in our return to school. A robust learning recovery program built around the five actions described above, which in turn is sustained over time, can serve as a springboard to give all of our children the opportunity to achieve the future they deserve.
Please, let's not go back to the classroom and do what we did before as if these past two years never happened.
NOTE: We first met Leslie when we were supporting the Leer y Aprender project in Guatemala. This USAID-funded project was led by Juarez and Associates. SIL LEAD was contracted to provide Bloom book development training. The resulting bookshelf on Bloom Library now has more than 600 books in Spanish, Mam, K'iche', Guatemalan Sign Language, and other Guatemalan languages. We asked Leslie if we could share a recent article she posted. It is both helpful and powerful and we believe you will appreciate it. To see her original post (in Spanish) you can go to her website.