What Pandemic Are We Responding To?

In its attempts to continue providing instruction, U.S. schools are implementing practices to make it as safe as possible for students to return in the Fall. A number of districts and independent schools are using terms like contact tracing, social distancing, and positivity rates to create safe environments and a return to learning. Schools are spreading out desks, requiring PPE, mandating temperature checks, and creating hybrid models to ensure students will continue to learn as generations of students have learned before. The focus on professional development to ensure faculty can teach in multiple modalities and redistribution of resources is a seismic shift for many schools.

Schools are doing what they can to pivot towards a situation that they have no precedence. So why are schools addressing this medical pandemic in such significant ways yet the pandemic of discrimination, mental health, and bullying is often swept under the rug? Allocating professional learning towards identity studies, anti-racism, and other DEI topics often seems like a good idea but not one that schools have time to devote towards the edification of their student, faculty/staff, and family communities.

Schools are making monumental shifts regarding COVID-19. While schools remain on their Summer breaks, administrations are trying to strategize how to respond to the social unrest that is not new, yet comprises many of the foundations of practices at their institutions. The @Black spread is shedding light on the voices of students that went unheard or were not responded to while students in the schools. Independent Schools like to tout how much financial aid they offer and are even responding to how much they have increased that budget due to economic hardships. As if letting these students into the doors was good enough. Should they be thankful they are alumni? A number of schools are doing a self-assessment of how their institutions did not care for students and are working to fix the matter. But are they working to fix the issue or do they want the problem to go away? 

COVID-19 has put a significant stress on all budgets. Some schools will tweak, which will allow heads of schools/superintendents and principals to advertise the improvements they are incorporating. If schools are not willing to really self-analyze what is at the core of the issues then the improvements can’t be expected to provide the significant progress that is necessary

Schools must respond and some may need to do it in an online format because the groundwork was not previously built. There are two conversations schools can have right now. In many schools, there are champions of this work that already exist. These social justice warriors may have tried to encourage change and speak out previously but were told that there wasn’t the time…or the resources…or something else to do this work now. Well if not now, then when? School Administrators—find these practitioners and listen to them. It isn’t about them developing one program for the entire student body and adult population. They can help you create a series of programs that will take time to be fully implemented. What you have been doing has not worked so listen.

Next, accept the messages of your community as gifts. They are sharing this information because they have some level of care about the institution. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t waste their time with you. Take your lumps and understand that the school did not do things right before. Learning is hard and uncomfortable; whether it is preparing for a big exam or writing a research paper. Hearing these messages and working with these advocates can help to bring about the systemic changes that should have happened decades ago. 

The pandemic has allowed schools the opportunity to reshape and redesign what really matters. Don’t waste this opportunity to try and return to how things used to be. That system was flawed, exclusive, and building blocks of it remain in practice and mentalities. If you care about the medical health and are willing to implement safety practices due to COVID-19, then devote the attention that is needed to simultaneously plan on the DEI topics your schools should have already considered.