It’s an understatement to notice that the whole global pandemic thing has been kinda tough!

It has. And it’s going to be hard for a while to come yet. It would be fun to just wave our hands and say “Okay, we stayed home for a while. But now we aren’t going to do that anymore, and everything will be fine! Yay!”

But let’s save fantasy for the fiction books in our library shelves.

Knowing that we are realistically still looking at months filled with the need to socially isolate ourselves in order to avoid the COVID virus, and to avoid spreading it around to other people, it’s good to be thinking now about how to make that happen.

School this fall will not look like school last fall. We know that. That’s not even an option.

Okay, so then – what should it look like? How can libraries plan ahead for a better outcome than we had this spring?

What we had in schools was not “real” online education – it was thrown together, and the best that everyone could do on almost zero notice. It’s good that it went as well as it did, and certainly a testament to the resilience and impressive nature of our schools! And it can be better.

We are sharing an excerpt from this article, thinking about some of the important ideas for the fall semester. You can read the whole thing here.

Seven Distance Learning Priorities to Consider Before Reopening Schools

“School leaders are now weighing how and if to reopen schools in the fall or sooner; and if they reopen, how to prepare for closing schools again when COVID-19 outbreaks recur. 

Diana Laufenberg wants decision-makers to make sure they’re asking the right questions while developing their plans. She is the executive director of Inquiry Schools and previously taught at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. She speaks regularly at SLA’s EduCon conference about how to change schools to meet students’ needs.

She was also in her tenth week working as a long-term substitute teacher in her rural Wisconsin community when shelter-in-place orders went into effect and her history lessons for 115 students in grades 7 – 12 had to be transformed to distance teaching. 

“Tech is not an issue for me, and I’m still telling you this is really hard,” said Laufenberg of distance teaching. Sponsored

She said we’re still struggling to process the ripple effects of school closures amid this pandemic because schools play such a fundamental role in society. 

“It’s trying to rethink a base societal structure that has been serving communities for a hundred years, and then we just stopped and tried to send a version of that into their homes,” said Laufenberg.

Schools provide education, medical care, counseling services, technology, transportation, physical activity, meals and a place for kids to be. Without schools, parents can’t work; and businesses can’t function without its workforce. Children miss out on developmental needs they typically get at school. 

“Schools are kind of complicated, but they’ve been functioning in society for so long that we almost don’t think of them as complex societal structures,” she said. “We’re currently finding just how both necessary and core to the function of how we do life that schools have been.”  

Right now, school closures are exacerbating inequities among the most vulnerable, who are already bearing a greater brunt of the financial, physical and mental harm caused by COVID-19. Students are not showing up for distance learning. Many don’t have internet access and some students are taking jobs as essential workers to make up for financial losses in their family or taking care of siblings while parents work. “

“There are, however, specific issues to address in order to improve learning for students when the next disruption strikes, according to Laufenberg.  

• 1. Ensure students have devices and internet connectivity.
• 2. Know when to pause. 
• 3. Examine what kind of skills would be helpful for students who struggled. 
• 4. Understand how people self-motivate. 
• 5. Understand that emergency remote distance learning has a shelf life.
• 6. Starting the school year with testing won’t help.
• 7. Get past “falling behind.” “

Read the rest of this article here, with information on each of these seven ideas!