An Education Interrupted
Few of us have experienced an event as widespread or as unsettling as the one which now besieges our world. While we have some knowledge of wars, recessions, and pandemics, we have known nothing on this scale. If it feels at all familiar, it is because our memory turns to science fiction novels and dystopian films to find a relatable corollary. While we have been admonished and implored to re-learn how to sacrifice or make the best of austere conditions, for the vast majority of Americans, the challenge is one of mindset rather than material destitution.
The Holocaust survivor and author Viktor Frankl wrote persuasively about mindset in his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning. Borrowing from Friedrich Nietzsche, Frankl wrote, ““Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” Our situation is not on par with Frankl’s, but the advice has relevance for all of us as our lives change over the coming weeks. As Frankl came to recognize, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” In our case, it is not principally someone who has maliciously done something to us. Our lives have been upended by the impersonality and indifference of a molecule of RNA encapsulated within a protein shell. Our area of action may have been circumscribed by the government’s restrictions, but it remains for us to choose the mindset with which we will respond.
For instance, Ridgeview will try to carry on a version of the learning we offered for the first three quarters of the academic year. It is an ambitious endeavor that none of us has any experience with. For many, to include our teachers, this is overwhelming. Let us acknowledge this at the outset: there will be moments of frustration and anger that arise from all quarters in the weeks and months ahead. Cooler heads and better hearts will not always prevail. To do and be the best we can for one another will require patience, flexibility, and grace. We should be prepared to accept that ideal outcomes cannot reasonably be expected from struggling people, and we must forbid ourselves from losing our humanity along the way.
If you will allow for a private prediction, I suspect that we are in for a marathon. Ridgeview cannot do all that it did for the first three quarters, or twenty years for that matter. We must attenuate our expectations. Some schools have elected to continue their normal schedules in an online format. Ridgeview chose not to do this for the following reasons:
Given that many of our families have multiple children enrolled at Ridgeview, and that many of their parents now find themselves in a situation in which they are working remotely from home, it seems unlikely that every person in the household will have the ability to simultaneously be online during the workday either because they do not each have their own computers or because of limited bandwidth for streaming video.
Additionally, we know from our survey that this crisis has financially impacted between forty and fifty percent of our families and their ability to procure new equipment, such as computers, is more limited than ever.
While the amount of screen time for our children will increase over what had previously been tolerable, expecting children to sit for six to eight hours per day in front of a computer is, we feel, both unrealistic and unhealthy.
From a mental health perspective, we feel it is important that our students and families strike the right balance and that Ridgeview plays an important role. For instance, to eliminate school altogether would be to eliminate a sense of purpose and routine (to mention nothing of learning), but to have the same expectations of our students as we did when we saw them daily is bound to create a level of stress for students that we are less likely to be aware of or able to alleviate.
While it is certainly our intent to adapt and overcome (Apta superaque), we are using tools such as Unified Classroom in PowerSchool and video conferencing through Zoom, and even Google Classrooms and other programs that were not designed to handle the amount of traffic an entire nation now demands of them. Some of our “best laid plans,” to quote Burns, will go awry; and, some of the technology will fail. I encourage everyone — teachers, students, and parents — to reach out, provide everyone with the benefit of the doubt, work with one another for the sake of learning rather than for the hard-nosed sake of assessment. So long as people make a good faith effort, no one can reasonably be penalized for their performance in the fourth quarter.
While the faculty have retained much of their autonomy, they have been counseled to take the following items into consideration:
Teach asynchronously – create learning experiences for students to work at their own pace and allow time for them to absorb the content
Less is more – understand that assignments are likely to take twice as long at home; prioritize and be realistic
Give explicit instructions – be deliberate and specify the length of time to complete the assignment
Be empathetic – assign a reasonable workload; encourage students to balance online work with offline work
Communicate consistently – choose specific ways in which you want for families and students to communicate
Office Hours – be available at specified times to provide support and answer questions
Seek feedback – seek and respond to feedback from students and parents; make adjustments as necessary
Identify lesson objectives – be clear and intentional about what students are intended to learn and those skills that they should be practicing
There is a great deal that can be learned during this time of uncertainty. As we adjust our mindsets, it is important that we realize all that can still be done. We may not be able to buy the brands we prefer or find everything we like at the stores; we may be fearful for the health of loved ones or worried over our financial situations. These are all legitimate and are not to be discounted, but we can also make the time for things we would not otherwise have thought to do. We can read the books that have been bought but have lain unread for months, we can catch up on podcasts, we can teach our children how to cook, change the oil, sew, do the laundry, put the cap on their toothpaste. We can plant a garden, go on a hike, try our hand at sketching a tree, draw with our children on the sidewalks, commence with spring cleaning, go bird watching, play board games as a family, watch old films, do arts and crafts, and sing songs. You can join us for the parent reading groups. As Stig Abell, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, recently pointed out: “the history of literature has ever been one of isolated people seeking connection with the unseen community around them; great reckonings emerging from little rooms.” The discussion groups, though now online, can be precisely that: “great reckonings emerging from little rooms.”
Above all, we can slow down. In the final analysis, it needn’t be an education so much interrupted as reimagined. As our lives move increasingly online, let’s none of us be afraid to turn the screens off, open a book, ignore the politics, and bring determination, hope, optimism, compassion, resilience, and patience back into fashion. This is not our new normal. We can, however, take the lessons we learn now into the post-pandemic, post-social isolation, and post-fear world with us if only we only have sense enough. And, rest assured, Ridgeview will be as it was once again.
Apta superaque
D. Anderson
Principal
