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How will education change in the future? This is something that is especially in teachers’ minds right now. We especially want to know how education will change in the immediate future. COVID 19 changed all of our worlds in a crazy way. Teachers were a major group that was hugely affected by this. Teachers had to on the turn of a dime completely change how they taught, connected, and supported their students. 

Since teachers cared deeply about the health of their students and their families they did this quickly and although it was hard for what I can see most teachers are glad that they did. Do teachers want to see their students, yes. They definitely lamented for their students and lamented the fact that they could not help them in the way they used to.  But they learned. They learned how to connect digitally. They learned how to take care of their students’ social and emotional needs in creative ways. They learned how to communicate with parents on a much more effective level. They adapted and they overcame.

 They did the best they could with little notice and completely changed things overnight. This may be why it is so hard to hear the federal government slamming the ways that districts have handled distance learning and how they are going to handle it in the fall. This seems to be an attack on teachers who were and are trying their best. 

The issue in the United States has been complicated by the response of our Federal Government and our education secretary Betsy DeVos who has called for students to be back in school 5 days a week and threatened to withhold funds if districts or states decide to not reopen or to use a hybrid system.

I have heard a lot from teachers over the last week that are really stressed about this response. If the federal government is pushing for this, teachers are left to wonder if things are really safe or if they are being forced back to the classroom because of money. Is this the future we want for education? Is this how education will change in the future to be even worse than it currently is? 

Ultimately, in the midst of all of this safety is the number one concern, however, this is a pivotal time for education and on many levels, it is a time that we can demand the future for education that we want. Education will change in the future and we can make sure it changes for the better 

#1 Concern: Safety

Currently, the number one concern is safety. This is really all that teachers can fully think about at this time and everyone has so many questions. My Instagram feed has been full of questions from teachers about what this next school year is going to look like. Are all kids coming back to school? If so how are we going to place desks six feet apart? Where are we going to get the space to house that many students six feet apart? I don’t even have desks. Who is going to buy desks? How can I keep a mask on a child all-day, especially a screaming preschooler who is overwhelmed by all this? On that note, how do I comfort a child from six feet away? If we do get sick will we have to take off two weeks if so will we be paid? If I miss too much school will I lose my job and therefore my healthcare? If the school board is meeting over zoom for safety reasons to discuss reopening schools how can we actually be ready to discuss reopening schools? How many teachers and kids do we predict might die? How many are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of opening schools?

I can’t help but think of Lord Farquaad from Shrek saying some of you may die but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. For teachers, that is a sacrifice that they are not willing to make. They are not willing for any of their kids, colleagues, families, staff, etc to get sick and die, and advocates for reopening should not be okay with that either. If people are making decisions like that we are definitely not ready to be back in school. 

#2 Concern: PPE Supplies

A big part of safety is adequate PPE Supplies and education will change in the future because we will need lots of PPE supplies if we go back. I had a teacher friend that works at a private school and she said her school predicted that each student would need two disposable masks a day. The problem with this is they probably don’t know how kids will treat masks. They probably have also not been around kids for long, especially lower elementary students. 

I was talking to my mom, who is a sub teacher, and we were joking about how kids would mess up their masks throughout the day. I said kids would have it off their face and be coloring it and if their teacher asked what they were doing they would say that they were trying to make it colorful. They may also be sticking stickers on it throughout the day. If teachers even still give those as rewards. They come back from the bathroom with a sopping wet mask because they washed it because it was dirty, or god forbid it fell in the toilet and then they proceeded to put it back on their face. It could also just break because these are kids and they are not exactly careful with everything. They will be adjusting it all day because it is annoying to them. What about the kids that can’t put it on themselves? How can teachers help them from six feet away? 

Maybe schools will be lucky and parents will have them practicing wearing masks at home, but let’s be honest that will probably be the exception, not the rule. Will teachers be given PPE beyond what the kids have? If schools run out of the PPE supplies that the school board predicted, will teachers need to pay for PPE out of their own pocket? Will teachers have to pay for it out of their own pockets anyway like everything else they have to pay for out of pocket? Will teachers get the supplies to disinfect their rooms? How often will they have to do that? Can they actually teach if they have to be constantly disinfecting everything? There are a lot of questions that are not being answered and that is adding stress to teachers’ lives as they are trying to figure out what the next school year will look like. 

#3 Concern: Digital Learning Supplies 

Overall, COVID 19 or not education will change in the future because of the technological advances and digital opportunities in our world right now. However, there are disparities in technology. Many poor and rural students do not have access to technology. If schools decide not to reopen and a digital learning route is taken. How are we making sure that kids that don’t have access to technology still have equal access to education? Will the school districts provide computers to students who don’t have them? 

Even if they do provide computers will there be programs and curriculum available to teach these kids under the current curriculum that the schools are working with? Then if they provide laptops for each kid are they going to provide internet access to the families that can’t pay for it? What about those rural areas that can’t get good internet even if they had money to pay for it? Believe it or not, there are still places in this country that have to use dial-up internet or satellite internet. These are so slow it would be almost impossible for students to work with them. 

More than likely we cannot fix this in this next year or even the next couple of years. However, if how education will change in the future involves a shift to digital, which I think we can all agree that seems to be the trajectory, how are we as a nation embracing that future? How are we building the infrastructure that would allow all people to get high-speed internet? Are we building an education system that can provide technology and internet at home for students regardless of their ability to afford such things? Technology is making sure that education will change in the future. Are we seeing that and embracing that shift? 

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#4 Concern: Justice Initiatives 

Besides COVID the last couple of months have shown us that justice initiatives are important and we need to be moving toward a more just and equitable culture especially in education. The last couple of months have brought these initiatives to the forefront of people’s minds. Those who have been paying attention are like why are people just seeing this? We are glad they are now seeing the importance and because of that, we need to take advantage of this awareness.

 How are we making our classrooms and curriculum more equitable? How can we change the paradigm that education has been based on for so long, which in particular is not working for students of color? Can our current curriculum even begin to do that? Do the writers of the curriculum even think about these issues as they write textbooks? I heard a teacher say today that she noticed that her textbook changed the content to not call slaves, slaves but laborers. How is this rewriting history to do the opposite of what justice initiatives hope to do? 

Are teachers who are working with students of color and know their needs better writers of the curriculum? Can they make their classroom more equitable through higher levels of thoughtfulness and being with students every day? As educators, we also need to be asking how our classrooms are not currently equitable and how we can change that. 

#5 Concern: Curriculum #buyteachermade

I mentioned the curriculum above a bit in justice initiatives and to take that a step farther. Are textbook writers that are not in the classroom the best people to make the curriculum that students will be using to learn? Do they know best about how students learn? Can they pivot the curriculum to rise to current issues in the world? 

It takes years to make new textbooks and to print them. I am predicting education will change in the future to include much more teacher made curriculum. This is something that we as educators need to advocate for. Since we know how students learn, we are more likely to create content that is engaging which makes students want to learn. In the midst of COVID 19, teachers can create digital lessons faster than curriculum writers.

If curriculum writers were not already pivoting to digital it would take them much longer to switch. Teachers have shown that they are able to pivot fast. We as educators need to #buyteachermade. We also need to advocate for school boards to create programs where teachers can #buyteachermade without having to spend a bunch of money out of their own pockets. Teachers Pay Teachers has tried to advocate for programs like this with their school access program. It is in beta right now but things like this program need to take off for teachers to have more control over how to teach their students in the way they know they can best learn. 

#6 Concern: Standardized Testing

One thing that is a lower concern for many teachers, just because they are so worried about safety at school to even consider it, is standardized testing. However, this is something that we have to talk about when we think of how education will change in the future because of COVID 19. This last year standardized testing was canceled and the world did not end. It was determined that the kids could not adequately do standardized tests in the atmosphere that currently existed. 

Will things change next year? Will kids actually be ready? Will the atmosphere be adequate for testing? Most teachers see that this year is going to be challenging for learning and most kids are going to be behind with all the new regulations and relearning how to teach in this new way. Is it fair to test them? Georgia just a couple days ago decided not to have testing for this next year and it was because teachers stood up and said no. If they can do it there we can do it here. Teachers know what testing is like, and have been calling for the end of it in some way for a while. We see the problems in the testing system and how some kids are just not able to rise to the testing arrangements. I know that I have students that are super smart but have crazy test anxiety and do really bad on tests even if they know the concepts. For the future of education, we need to ban together and say #teacherskNOwtesting and teachers should be listened to. 

On another level will teachers still be evaluated on how students do on these tests? Will schools be evaluated by these tests? Will schools lose funding if their students don’t do good? Overall, we need to call for a change in education that changes funding being linked to testing. Schools that don’t do well on testing need more funding not less. There are other ways to evaluate how our students are doing and what they are learning without standardized testing. Education will change in the future and should change by getting rid of funding being linked to testing, over-testing our students, and evaluating teachers based solely on testing. 

Next Steps 

In order to make sure that education will change in the future for the better we need to start listening to teachers and educators. They need to be invited to the table in discussions for reopening and curriculum. They need to be able to shape how education is done because they are the experts who are in the rooms with the kids. We need to #buyteachermade and push school boards to allow teachers to create a curriculum and make it easier to buy curriculum from other teachers. 

Parents out there this one is for you, speak up. If you have the same type of questions, I listed above bring them up with school boards, with the PTA, with your friends in normal conversation. Believe it or not school boards and districts are more likely to listen to you than they are to teachers. If you want to see education change in the future you need to pressure the people who can do it and who will listen to you. 

Call your state education boards, email, and call your governor. If you don’t know their numbers or emails look them up. I am in California so I am going to give you the information on how to contact the California State Board of Education. Go to https://www.cde.ca.gov/re/di/cd/ to see how to contact them. Write them letters, get friends together to write letters. Call them and get friends to call them. We can demand the future we want for education. That way we will know how education will change in the future because we will have a say in it. Now is a time where they are more likely to listen and we have the power and duty to help them hear our grievances.

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