There is a scene in the Wizard of Oz, right after the climatic melting of the Wicked Witch, where Dorothy and her friends travel back to Emerald City to speak with the Wizard in an effort to return home. To their dismay, the Wizard is reluctant to keep his promise of helping them. They are met with a cacophony of chaos – smoke, lights, and sound – in an attempt to divert and distract. It isn’t until Toto pulls back the curtain that the Wizard is exposed as an ordinary man who only professes otherworldly power to exert influence over his followers, myth outmaneuvering reality.
The current reality for Kentucky’s educators is one of anxiety and angst as we contemplate the services we are providing our children. When coupling the research on the impact of the classroom teacher with that on lengthy breaks from school, our worry is appropriately placed. There is no timetable for a return to educational freedoms and that doesn’t work well when we know there is so much to accomplish. For us, it’s personal. We miss our students. We miss their successes and struggles; we miss their stories; we miss when they detail their dreams and fears. We miss them.
I am optimistic that the 48-hour period beginning around noon on March 11 will forever be etched in my memory as the time frame that changed public education. I want to someday reflect on that moment when educators across our state found their voice in the face of the greatest crisis we could imagine. I want to think about how Glinda the Good Witch was right when she said, “You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”
If there is any educational positive on this journey, my hope is that on the other side of this pandemic we are able to better prioritize and design learning for our students. Much like those who traveled on the yellow brick road, now is the time to take action and recognize the potential we have within. I hope we find the lion’s courage to take a critical look at the myths perpetuated by politics and the high-stakes testing movement that detracts from our mission. I hope we exhibit the scarecrow’s intellect to access the latest research on the developing brain and then act on those findings. I hope we possess the tin man’s compassion to accept that students need varying forms of supports and that comparing them to each other only exacerbates their differences. I hope. I just hope.
While the urgency of COVID19 called into action the instructional tools, practices, and policies already at our disposal, in no way should these same characteristics define our post-pandemic approaches to learning. The immediate question was how to replace face-to-face instruction; the loftier question is how to revolutionize ALL instruction in a manner that personalizes opportunity and ignites passion. The use of broad-based virtual learning is but a tiny proportion of the divergent thinking necessary to engage today’s learner and to attain greater depth of understanding. Think about it… incumbent upon us when we return is unearthing the learning gaps of our students without compromising high expectations. In what ways will we innovate? How will we provide educational services that remediate, engage, and stretch all at the same time? The conversation must begin now…the chance to redefine the profession will be upon us sooner than we think.
Though the structures and traditions of education have outlasted wars and civil rights movements and a myriad of political agendas, I am hopeful that the COVID19 pandemic fosters a different response; a response that affirms Dorothy’s revelation: what we have inside of us is all we have ever needed. Simply surviving and returning to normalcy is not enough. “School” may assume many faces. I challenge all educators across the state to seize this occasion by rejecting comfortableness and establishing new boundaries for which learning can flourish. This is the time. Public educators in Kentucky are among the brightest in the profession and when given the opportunity to re-imagine the school experience of our children, I know we will rise. Kentucky will rise. Indeed, there’s no place like home.
asupervue 