I was lucky to virtually meet David Lundie during an online event sponsored by the RSA. David recently completed a study on 700 teachers’ responses to the pandemic. The research was conducted in the UK (for you Americans, that means England, Scotland, and Wales) and, based on my informal talks with teachers here in the US and India, seems reflective of teachers around the world.
Some highlights from the data:
- While the social effects of the pandemic are widespread they are particularly acute in underserved communities. While almost 40% of teachers expect many more children to be labelled at risk or face interventions for social services by the end of the lockdown, 68.4% of the teachers serving underprivileged communities have those concerns. While only 5% of teachers in richer schools feel that their children are at physical risk, 63% of teachers in the most deprived quintile believe their students may be at risk. While over 85% of teachers serving the lowest economic quintile students feel their students are not getting physical activity and stimulation, only about 5.2% of those serving the upper quintiles feel that way about their students, and 56% of the teachers of the underprivileged expect their students to be malnourished while only 2.6% of the teachers of the more privileged students expect malnutrition to be a factor.
- Only about 28% of teachers feel they are able to provide the mental health support their kids need, and fewer than 40% feel their schools will offer the support needed when the children return. Virtually all believe that more support will be needed when children return full time to the buildings.
- Most teaches feel that schools will need to rebalance priorities away from test results and more toward student well-being. Over 90% of teachers hope that education will become less target-driven and more humane.
- Three quarters of teachers are concerned about their own health and safety when returning to school regardless of assurances by the government, given that they will probably return before the virus is completely defeated.
- Teachers expect that most of the first quarter back will be devoted to re-establishing behavioral norms and routines, thus with reduced time and effort available for “normal” learning activities. Almost 90% expect that students will have more difficulty regulating their behavior and attention, and almost 80% feel that schools will not be equipped to help them with their students’ resultant traumas. Ninety percent of teachers feel that part of their job upon return will be to “prepare my students for a world in which they will get to re-evaluate many of the things we have taken for granted about how we treat the environment and one another.”
- Three quarters of the teaches agreed that many of their students are having chaotic home lives during the pandemic, and about two-thirds feel that many of their students’ parents will be unemployed by the end of the lockdown.
- Interestingly, only about a quarter of teachers are finding that students are developing a greater self-reliance during the pandemic. I would have expected this to be closer to three –quarters, but I guess that’s not what teachers are experiencing with their students.
- Eighty percent of teachers feel that their high attaining students are adapting to online learning, while just 3% feel that their low attaining students are.
- Ninety percent of teachers feel that the pandemic has given parents a greater understanding of what teachers do, and that schools now have a chance to “re-evaluate some outdated practices and modernize what it means to be a teacher.”
Some of the recommendations:
- System-wide and school-wide planning for kids’ social and emotional needs, providing resources for the children and tools for the teachers to meet these needs.
- Special attention for students coming from the lowest economic quintiles, and significantly extra resources for schools that primarily serve that population addressing mental and physical health and wellness
- Provide online opportunities to the students who have adapted well to online learning while providing more human to human support for those who have not adapted.
- Schools systems and schools take the opportunity to implement practices and innovations (including but not limited to technology) that support and prepare young people for the societal and economic challenges of the future, while discarding those that do not, especially those that have been solely continued because of inertia or “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”