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Teach aha moments2/15/2024 This friend told me, “Myron, you don’t notice things that jump out at me immediately-you are oblivious to the familiar.” However, there is often an even bigger hurdle to leap when it comes to change-we simply don’t see the need for it.Ī home-improvement friend of mine suggested that I get someone unfamiliar with my home to point out things that could use a little TLC. We find ourselves entrenched in old habits, and, therefore, much of what we do is simply what we have always done. We need to encourage and embrace the Aha moments and share these ideas through collaboration with all educators.Change can be difficult. We need to consider what we know to be true and build from there a flexible and evolving education system. AHA! There is no one method of education that works for every kid. Yes, many kids do not perform well with distance learning, but there are other kids who are thriving with it. We need to consider all that we have learned. The pandemic education plan that we have all been forced to endure for this last year is not all bad. AHA! If we are to better educate our kids, we need first to better educate their educators. I was surprised that after at least a decade of professional development for educators emphasizing technology integration and online learning in education that a majority of educators were totally unprepared for the transition to online teaching. My final Aha moment came after I spoke to hundreds of educators about how the year of pandemic education has affected them as educators. We must deal with social and emotional needs of kids before we can accurately assess their learning. AHA! Strong teacher/student relationships strengthen learning. Now a term that we have all become familiar with is SEL, Social and Emotional Learning. That has made a big difference in a bad situation for many kids, as well as parents. From the beginning of the year of pandemic education, educators have stepped up in reaching out to their students. Probably the greatest of all the AHA moments that educators and parents have had is the role that relationships play in learning. AHA! Unless we prioritize the Internet into our infrastructure for equitable countrywide access, we will never have the ability to properly implement distance learning. Why haven’t we prioritized and provided Internet access, as we have with water and electricity to the country? We seem to have the technology for this, but not the inclination to provide it. We are beginning the third decade of the Twenty-First Century. AHA! How can we provide online learning when we can’t provide adequate and equitable Internet access to the country? Of course another stumbling block is the Internet itself. It showed me that it is impossible to educate kids online with more kids in a family than devices in the home to access the Internet. The pandemic has certainly hit that with a huge monkey wrench. It was always my belief that Tech and online teaching was the direction to take. AHA! One can’t pull him, or herself up by their bootstraps, if they don’t own a pair of boots. It knows no bounds of race although many people of color fall within this category it also includes white kids of urban and rural poverty groups. Although I do believe the system is riddled with systemic racism, poverty is a separate issue. They are however, being magnified to a point where they can no longer be ignored, or denied. Many of the biggest problems that are being acknowledged in education today are not new. AHA! Ironically, tech is both the problem and the solution at this point in this education evolution. Twenty-first century technology has both helped and hindered the entire process. Many changes have exposed more problems that will require new solutions to these new problems. Many concepts and assumptions, based on what was “normal” before the pandemic, have been discarded, replaced, adjusted and improved. The pandemic blew up the existing education system, forcing changes that could never have evolved naturally at such a rapid pace under normal circumstances. They are questioning, what was considered normal for centuries, as a system in need of change more than had ever before been realized. Whether it is called an “Aha Moment” or ”an Epiphany” educators are seeing many aspects of their profession in a different light over this last year of the pandemic education plan.
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