Contributing Editor: Sarah Fillion, Director of Consulting and Certification at CRS
July is the time to rejuvenate! Having completed the school year, we hope you’ve had a chance to reflect on the successes experienced this past spring and those ideas that can be implemented when school starts in the fall. After the many challenges we faced at the end of the last school year, it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and truly revitalize ourselves. By doing so, we will be better able to care for others.
July is also an important time to reimagine what a successful school year could look like this fall. In this issue of the journal, we have selected pieces that we hope will spark ideas of how we can work together to create a better school experience for every student, every day. By identifying opportunities in the future school structure that will allow students and teachers to continue to grow, we can find ways to construct an optimal learning environment for everyone in our learning community.
Because of the events our communities have experienced, it will be critical for educators to recalibrate our expectations before the return of school. By pausing to rejuvenate, reimagine, and recalibrate, we can ensure that our staff, students, and families see school as a unifying place, a community hub that supports and brings out the best in everyone.
The recent pandemic has challenged all of us. It’s a circumstance most of us have never had to face, and the uncertainties that came with it proved stressful to many. You may have had to quickly learn a new digital platform or better understand features of an existing platform. You may have had to wear…
I teach eighth-grade Bilingual Language Arts (American Sign Language and English) at the California School for the Deaf, located in Fremont. Our school is unique in that all of our students are Deaf, and many of them live on campus Sunday night through Friday and then are transported home to their families for the weekend….
The pandemic and the move to distance learning, though, has disrupted what we have come to know and expect regarding school and teaching. We started a school year that felt completely known but the end of the year felt far from that. The pandemic and its effect means teaching will require a new approach, forcing…
Following the death of George Floyd in my neighboring city of Minneapolis, a sense of urgency and momentum for social justice is palpable throughout the community. The city has started to address this by first reimagining how to deliver public safety services, but reviewing the inequities in the school system will not be far behind….
The combination of the pandemic and protests calling for racial justice in the spring and early summer of 2020 have forced school leaders to reimagine their roles and recalibrate how to prepare administrators to lead. School administrators will need to get a 2.0 version of our current education leadership training to reassess how their school…
Center for Responsive Schools asked two special area educators about the particular challenges they are facing during this time of the coronavirus while adapting to the changes required during COVID-19. Katie Baron teaches Family and Consumer Science at Trailside Middle School in Ashburn, Virginia. Mindy Ryan has been a school counselor for twenty-five years in…
Center for Responsive Schools asked two educators with different perspectives to write about their experiences during the spring of 2020. Dr. Lauri Bousquet works with student teachers and discusses the challenges faced with remote learning and what they will need to change for future school years. Megg Morganstern, an Instructional Coach for K–8 teachers, talks…