Teaching

2022 in Review

2022 saw teachers and students alike adjusting to a “new normal.” As the dust settles on the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns, many educators have found themselves facing new quandaries: How do we address the inequities that were exposed and heightened by the pandemic? How can we help students “catch up” scholastically, socially, and emotionally when they’ve spent formative years in a state of lockdown? Can things really go back to normal? Should they? Below are five popular posts from 2022 addressing these and other important and timely concerns from educators.

Student Pieces from “Coming of Age in 2020”: How Teenagers Experienced the Pandemic

Dear Reader,

The start of this school year has brought with it a mix of feelings for educators and students alike. Perhaps the strongest has been relief—even joy—at returning to physical classrooms and the company of peers, resuming sports practices and other much-missed afterschool activities, and leaving behind the experience of learning or teaching in front of a computer screen with only virtual interactions to sustain engagement. But it has also been accompanied by record rates of depression and anxiety, as everyone carries with them to school the pandemic legacy of stress and isolation, grief, and fear.

I’m proud to say that Norton Books in Education has just this week published Coming of Age in 2020: Teenagers on the Year that Changed Everything in which teenagers from across the country show what it was like to be trapped inside and missing—or reinventing—milestones like graduations and championship games while the coronavirus pandemic raged, an economic collapse threatened, the 2020 election loomed and the Black Lives Matter movement galvanized millions. The 161 pieces chosen for the book—diary entries, comics, photos, poems, paintings, texts, lists, charts, songs, Lego sculptures, recipes and rants—come from over 5500 entries to a contest that The New York Times Learning Network ran in the fall of 2020, inviting students to share their experiences during a time that will define their generation. We think it’s an extraordinary collection from ordinary teenagers that is, as Jim Burke says, “a testimony to the strength and resilience of young people.” For despite the stressful events these students were experiencing, their creative pieces often sound a note of hope, growth, and inner resolve. This seems like an opportune time to look back at where we all were two years ago and think with students about the changes that have occurred.

Today on K-12Talk we’re sharing a small selection of these student pieces, with their accompanying artist’s statements, and we encourage you to visit The Learning Network site for exciting ideas about how to teach with these materials: How to Teach With the Art and Artifacts in Our New Book,‘Coming of Age in 2020’

Carol Collins, Education Editor

In Defense of Teaching Troubled Texts in Troubling Times

by Deborah Appleman

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
—James Baldwin

As the summer wanes, we teachers slowly turn our focus to the beginning of school. For teachers of literature, that often means a trip to the dusty bookroom to decide what texts teachers and students should read together throughout the year. This is, or should be, a complicated decision, a thoughtful calibration of text and context, of who our students are and what kind of reading would serve them best as we encourage their personal and intellectual development. After the obligatory quick count of paperback and perma-bound copies of literary texts, we consider factors of readability, literary merit, and relevance. We re-read state standards and confer with our fellow teachers about our school’s curriculum. This fall, however, there are even more factors to consider as we attempt to make our best pedagogical decisions about what to teach and why.

Advice from Veterans for New Teachers

by Christine Boatman

New teachers everywhere: welcome to the education profession! I and all your colleagues are so glad you are here to be a part of our team raising the next generation of students. We see your enthusiasm and excitement. Your passion and zeal bring joy to our schools and rejuvenates all of us. We are excited to hear your new ideas.

While there is so much anticipation and excitement with being a new teacher, it can be hard! Just remember that all veteran teachers were once first year teachers; with that in mind, I have gathered below some advice for your first year in the classroom, both from my own experience and from the advice that was given to me by my colleagues when I was a new teacher.

Lead Like a Teacher: The Best Way for Administrators to Show Teacher Appreciation

By Miriam Plotinsky

Summer may be on the horizon, but the difficult circumstances of this school year will long be in the minds and hearts of educators. As this third year of pandemic-era learning closes, it is so important to recognize the heroic efforts that both teachers and administrators have made each day to keep schools afloat. Teacher appreciation may only be formally celebrated for one week in May, but the expertise that teachers have demonstrated in maintaining connections with students and continuing to promote opportunities for learning in the face of significant challenge is nothing short of remarkable. To further celebrate teachers and their vast knowledge base, the following is a short preview excerpt from Lead Like a Teacher (publication forthcoming in 2023), a step-by-step guide that provides school leaders with the tools they need to elevate the teacher perspective as they build and maintain collaborative leadership structures.

Teachers Can Leverage Their Value to Transform Schooling

By Patricia A. Jennings

Our school systems are completely outmoded and becoming so dysfunctional that students and school staff are being stretched to the breaking point. Teacher dissatisfaction is at an all-time high, discipline problems are rampant, and school staff are being subject to more aggressive and even violent outbursts from both students and parents. In my view, these are all symptoms of the intense pressures that our outdated education system places on students, teachers, and families—especially as this system struggles to return to its status quo following the Covid pandemic. Meanwhile, teachers are burned out and quitting in droves as the teacher shortage crisis deepens. How can we turn this around? First, we need to examine our education system itself.

The Power of Students Teaching Students

He outlined his lesson plan, which called for a discussion of the short story he’d assigned for homework. With a smile, I assured him that he was more than ready to teach. He sat silently for a few seconds and then asked in a quavering voice, “What if they don’t do my homework? Then what will we talk about?” As a veteran educator and administrator, I’ve mentored many rookie teachers. The young man worrying about homework compliance was as rookie as it gets: a seventeen-year-old about to make his first presentation to my independent study seminar.

A Reflection on the 2021-2022 School Year, So Far

By Kevin Scott

Last year I wrote about my return to the classroom in a wild year and discussed many of the challenges I faced as a 7th grade U.S. history teacher after more than a decade away from teaching. While some facets of teaching—and attending—middle school have returned to ‘normal,’ so many things have not. For example, while all my students are back in the school building they don’t have lockers because our locker pods would pack them too closely together. So they carry everything with them everywhere they go throughout the day. This doesn’t sound too bad until I think about what it would have been like in my former office life, if I had not had a cubicle—if I had had to carry my lunch, my laptop, and any notes or notebooks to every meeting I attended every day, with no place to call my own. My students are now twelve-year-old nomads who are really, really good at leaving stuff behind.

Diversifying Your ELA Curriculum in 2022

By Sharon Kunde

In addition to resting and recharging, the weeks leading up to the New Year are a perfect time for reflecting on our practices as educators. This year, I encourage ELA teachers to consider the diversity of the authors and works represented in their syllabi. Teachers who seek greater diversity when planning an English Language Arts syllabus may face a number of hurdles, including lack of time in an already jam-packed curriculum, difficulty in choosing between an abundance of options, or a lack of knowledge of what options there may be. Below, I explore a list of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth century poems by African American authors that can easily be included in existing secondary classroom syllabi, or that could form the backbone of a more involved unit-long or semester-long course of study.