Let’s not go back to “normal” in education

For many of us in education, 2020 would be the year in which we expanded our vision, innovated our offering, and showcased the many ways we continued to integrate technology into our students’ day-to-day learning.

What began as an exciting start to the year quickly transformed into a time of uncertainty, change, and a complete rethink about how we educate students remotely instead of on campus.

Before the pandemic, technology had mostly become an innovative addition to the classroom, including robotics, coding, and drones. Very few educational institutions had made the courageous leap into the mostly unknown world of online learning. They cited concerns about the social and emotional well-being of students, a lack of time to build the necessary platforms, and an overwhelming belief that teachers should be in the classroom where they have always been.

COVID-19 was the unexpected and unwelcome push that derailed our collective objections and drove us forward into exploring the largely unchartered educational waters that technology had to offer. As the well-known proverb says, “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Or, as I like to say, “We had no choice!”

During those early days of recording lessons, setting up Google Classroom and virtual live classrooms, I was struck by how much progress can occur when people have no choice but to power through and get the job done.

It wasn’t easy, and it definitely wasn’t perfect, but we soon realised that as long as students had an electronic device and data, they could continue to be educated. So, educate them we did – with a fair amount of trial and error amidst the uncertainty about how long we would all have to do this and when life would return to “normal”.

However, I don’t believe that school life will ever return to what we once saw as “normal”. Nor should it. Instead, the global pandemic has been the disruption that we so desperately needed, under undesirable circumstances, to move education forward in ways we might never have had the time, drive, or courage to do.

As such, we have learnt new methods, new ways, new advantages, and new possibilities of educating our children in a manner that adequately prepares them for a world that doesn’t yet exist. This is a future where they will continuously be required to change, adapt, pivot, unlearn, discover, and recreate.

Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to go back to what we once thought was normal in the same way that it doesn’t make sense to go back to communicating with our parents through the post office.

Here’s what we have learnt and why I think it’s worth keeping even after COVID-19 is a distant memory; and why education in general and matric in particular will never be the same:

1.    Having a beginner’s mindset

The pandemic forced most teachers to adopt a beginner’s mindset when the old ways of doing things were no longer an option. Having a beginner’s mindset allows educators to rethink their material and how they present it, approach teaching, and learn with a different perspective.

Teachers who successfully adopt a beginner’s mindset will reimagine the learning environment in its many forms without the pressure of having to conform to previous pedagogies. This openness to new possibilities and outcomes will spring-clean outdated, preconceived ways of doing things and be a breath of fresh air for all involved. In essence, it’s the perfect breeding ground for curiosity and innovation in education to thrive.

2.    Finding new ways to educate vastly different students

COVID-19 resulted in many teachers pre-recording videos of their lessons, which allowed students to pause, rewind, and replay challenging sections and learn at their own pace. Stronger and more advanced students also had the opportunity to speed through the content and move onto self-study or practical tasks without getting bored.

We would be remiss in losing this unprecedented insight and practice, which could be a gamechanger for students long after COVID-19. I’m confident that it will reduce the number of students falling behind and those needing extra lessons as they will be able to review, revise, and relearn the relevant content at their own pace and in their own time.

3.    Finding new ways to connect with students and parents after school

The pandemic allowed us to reimagine how we connect with both parents and students outside of the classroom. For example, parents’ evenings can be held effectively online without parents needing to spend hours at the school.

In the same way, students will be able to schedule a quick 15-minute Zoom call with a teacher to ask a question or go over a specific section of work without needing an “extra lesson”. In this way, teachers will be able to streamline their time and use it more efficiently.

4.    Finding new ways to assess students

There is a very definite roadmap that teachers have used over the years: teach and test. Education in the time of COVID-19 allowed us to find new ways of assessing students in a way that allowed them to relearn and revisit content until their understanding and grasp of it became more important than an assessment itself.

5.    A hybrid learning model

Having said all of the above, I don’t believe that a post-pandemic education will mean an end to traditional face-to-face learning. Instead, online learning taught us that students missed campus life and face-to-face teaching and learning, and that a hybrid model of learning will be the way to go moving forward.

This will include days on and days off campus, learning content at home with pre-recorded videos that will allow students to learn at their own pace, and classroom time spent applying skills to content already learnt.

There is no doubt that the disruption to traditional education brought about by COVID-19 has inspired the rethinking of traditional education. Changes that would have been inconceivable before the pandemic, have been made due to necessity. This has made it possible to reassess educational models that were assumed to be fundamental and unchallengeable in the past.

Progressive schools and educators will never be able to return to “normal”, and will instead harness the disruption that has occurred in education to have a beginner’s mindset and continue to innovate and make education more suitable for the evolving needs of our world.

• Joseph Gerassi is the executive head of Redhill School, former principal of King David High School Victory Park and the Absa Jewish Achiever Professional Excellence Award 2019 winner.