America Dissected S2E19: COVID and the Classroom

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This morning, America Dissected released an episode that spoke to a lot of the questions that I have been asking myself lately. In it, host Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, epidemiologist and former Health Officer for the City of Detroit, examines what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on children, parents, and educators in the United States. You can listen to the whole episode HERE or find it on most podcast services.

If you aren’t able to listen to the episode, here are some key points from Dr. El-Sayed’s conversation with sociologist and education researcher, Nikhil Goyal, that stuck with me.

  • Children, families, and educators are all experiencing trauma. For some, these are entirely new stresses, but for others this outbreak is exacerbating existing trauma. Children of frontline workers are especially vulnerable to the stresses and anxieties of this time. The issue is compounded by how difficult it is to provide trauma informed care virtually.

  • Learning gaps are just a reality. Online education cannot replicate the same learning environment as school. We need to acknowledge that students will have learning gaps and start thinking about how those gaps can be identified and filled later on.

  • We need to manage our expectations. This is not life as normal. Our prepared environment has transformed from in-person communities with purposeful work and genuine social organization to a virtual environment where each individual is experiencing some level of trauma. Why should we hold our adolescents and ourselves to the same expectations we had before this crisis started?

  • School is more than just academics. Children, especially in the public system, receive essential services through their school. It is a place for socializing, play, and connecting to a community beyond the family. Motor skills, critical thinking, problem solving, and social skills are all things practised at school. The developmental impact of sheltering in place on children is not yet known but we need to be thinking about more than just supporting learning academic content as this isolation continues.