Originally published April 22, 2020

Now that all fifty states have formal school closure mandates, millions of students are tuning out while struggling with a lack of meaningful social experiences that often define the developmental years.

COVID-19 has accelerated the shift to remote learning, but many schools are not prepared for this change. This shift is especially challenging for the communities hit hardest by the increasingly polarized economy.

Despite the obstacles, how can students and educators make the most out of this disruption? How can we use this experience to take care of and improve ourselves and our education system?

“We’re encouraging teachers, if they can, to just stop trying to do traditional instruction and [instead] co-construct projects with kids, giving them an opportunity to bring voice and choice and interest into those projects”

This transition has the potential to give teachers and students more flexibility than we’ve seen in decades. Public schools that have closed due to the coronavirus can forgo the Department of Education’s typical requirements for standardized testing. “We’re encouraging teachers, if they can, to just stop trying to do traditional instruction and [instead] co-construct projects with kids, giving them an opportunity to bring voice and choice and interest into those projects” said Tom Vander Ark, CEO of learning design firm Getting Smart and author of the book Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World.

As a former public school superintendent in Washington state and the first Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Vander Ark has a unique understanding of both the private and public sectors. He added “I think we can count this month or the month of May as sort of the end of the 30 year standards based reform movement where a lot of us, including me, thought by imposing standards assessment and accountability that it would really drive equity-focused improvement in our schools. And I think we’ve found lots of limitations to that sort of thinking.”

Moving Toward Effective Digital Learning

So what decisions can we make now that will help us move toward the kind of personalized digital learning that supports collaboration, innovative ideas, and critical thinking? What should schools and teachers do?

1. Get every student a device and access to wifi: An estimated 12 million children in the U.S. don’t have access to a broadband connection. “It’s a big challenge, but it’s one that schools and communities can solve together. It’s one that we have to be creative on but this crisis showed that equity when it comes to connectivity is super important,” said Vander Ark. We’re seeing school districts deploying wifi-equipped buses and tech companies helping to pay for student laptops. These are incredible efforts and we need to continue bridging the digital divide to get every student connected.
2. Build relationships using technology: “I think another thing that’s been reinforced in the last week or two is that relationships are really, really critical. This has been one of the shortcomings of online learning over the last twenty years.” We know that relationships are really good for us, but embracing community actually helps us to live longer, happier lives. We can use existing technology to video chat, message, or even play games online to stay connected.
3. Encourage community-connected project based learning: In Mr. Vander Ark’s most recent book Power of Place he argues to view the community as the classroom. Now the community is the classroom. Students can take this time to reflect on how their community is changing and take a walk outside if possible. It’s also a great opportunity for juniors and seniors to take on a capstone project exploring a problem they find meaningful.
4. Support passion projects: Whether it’s picking up the guitar or learning more about an interesting topic, we could all benefit from some self-directed learning. For students interested in computing or technology, several companies are offering online courses that could potentially count toward high school graduation requirements, including P-TECH from IBM, Microsoft, Grow with Google, and AWS.

Students are experiencing an unprecedented amount of voice and choice in their learning while their typical expectations are lifted. Educational leaders will need to adjust their standard methods of teaching and learning when schools reopen. “I think a lot of kids are not going to put up with traditional education when they do go back to school,” said Vander Ark.

He recommended “more competency-based progressions where kids really understand and own the learning outcomes and have more optionality when it comes to how they learn and where they learn and how they demonstrate their learning. We need to build more flexible learner-centered systems.”

The least advantaged people are the ones who are most affected by this crisis. In addition to the educational opportunity gap, we still have persisting issues to address: climate change, the need for social equality, the inequities of the innovation economy. We ought to use this time to self-reflect and consider what it is that we really care about. As Vander Ark put it, “the flip side to keep in mind is that there’s never been a better time to be a young person. There’s never been a better opportunity to make a difference in the world.”