WE NEED TO STOP TALKING ABOUT ‘LEARNING LOSS’
San Diego city schools have had their doors open for about a month now and the debate about the right way to proceed with schooling continues as some families keep their children home and others are outraged their children have been home this year at all. Regardless of whether your child has been doing distant learning or hybrid learning, you have likely heard the public panic regarding the year of lost learning and instructional time.
At the start of the pandemic, teachers were receiving overwhelming public praise as caregivers had a close look at their child’s schoolwork and saw how teachers had so quickly pivoted to distance learning. In the fall, however, the discourse shifted with the growing dissatisfaction about the quality of the education students were receiving combined with the increasing challenge of the pandemic as it continued longer than most anticipated.
Throughout the year, school staff, administrators and Gov. Gavin Newsom were ridiculed for wasting the students’ time with lackluster online lessons, drastically shorter school days leading to a decrease in the time students spent learning, and occasionally the sentiment that school should have just been canceled altogether since, “No one is learning anything.”
While the frustration and exasperation over this school year’s constant back and forth is warranted, the discourse about learning gaps is only a small part of a bigger picture. There is validity in these concerns, of course, but it is paramount that we all acknowledge that students are learning. They may not be learning what the state originally intended, but the 2020-21 school year will likely be a year the students remember for the rest of their lives.
Some students have learned, to my surprise, that they actually learn better away from the distractions present in a classroom. Other students have learned how to cook, and others picked up new hobbies to fill their days. Many have learned, for the first time, how to be intentional with friends when they can’t see them every day at school. For some students, they have learned how to advocate for themselves when they aren’t understanding something in class and can’t just call their teacher over to their desk. The list of learning goes on and on and on.
This conversation regarding the loss of learning became so ubiquitous that #learningloss is being used across Twitter with ideas for how to combat the learning loss that occurred throughout the pandemic. Chelsea Cochrane, a teacher at High Tech High Mesa, coined #learningfound to confront the narrative that this year has been one solely of learning loss. Cochrane started to share, and has encouraged others to share, examples of how students continue to learn despite the challenge this year has been.
One post by Christine Dixon, an innovation coordinator at Double Peak School in San Marcos, showed pictures and video clips of second-grade students coding Mother’s Day cards using Scratch. If you scroll through the video clips and images these teachers have posted, learning loss will be the last thing on your mind. You will see 7-year-olds extracting DNA from strawberries while wearing masks in a half-empty classroom or screenshots of Zoom classes in which students display and discuss their finished artwork. A lot has been lost this year, but learning isn’t necessarily one of them.
It is no secret this has been an atypical school year chock-full of atypical learning, but choosing to continue to focus the national conversation on the loss of learning perpetuates the deficit mindset many take when discussing schooling and the capabilities and resiliency of children and adolescents.
It would be an even bigger loss if the 2021-22 school year is being planned with this same panic and deficit mentality. Our students don’t need to be reminded of all they have been robbed of this year. They know. Especially the graduating class of 2021, which has lost out on school dances, sporting events and even a graduation ceremony. It is up to us, the adults in these students’ communities, to remind them of all they have overcome this year and all the ways they have learned and grown.
Some students have learned, to my surprise, that they learn better with no classroom distractions.
Slomka was a 12th-grade humanities teacher at High Tech High Chula Vista and is pursuing a master of social welfare degree. She lives in University City.