What happens when schools re-open?
Our children across the world have had one of the longest breaks away from school in recent times. This has been a frequently debated, hotly contested issue in governments across the globe. The way this issue will be handled will likely have a huge say in the people’s belief in their elected representatives.
While a lot has already been said on the subject, there is one fundamental mistake that millions of schools will make the day school re-opens. Teachers will open textbooks and start teaching the curriculum.
Confused?
In a recent conversation with a friend, Dhanush, he asked me a powerful question.
When children return to school and the teacher walks into the classroom, what should be the first few words exchanged?
As teachers and educators, we run the risk of being so far behind our syllabi that we may just rush back to teaching. And the moment we do that we don’t acknowledge the thousands of feelings, fears, anxieties, and insecurities that children have had in their hundreds of days away from school.
Here’s a short list of things that children could have been exposed to in the last 9 months:
Fear
Separation
Death
Grief
Anxiety
Loss of family income
Domestic Violence
Sexual Abuse
Depression
……
The list goes on.
As an educator, the moment you get back to ‘business as usual’ you basically tell students that none of those feelings are valid. A dangerous, risky thing to say to anyone. Left unaddressed, these feelings could result in anything from a lack of trust in adults, to violence, depression, and more for the rest of their lives.
What we need is a school re-opening curriculum. Not the kind that takes years to review and goes through one committee after another with no end in sight. We need one that is swiftly, expertly, designed, contextualized, disseminated, and implemented in every classroom across the world focused on humanity.
One where we acknowledge all the horrible things that children have seen and gone through, and work with them to slowly return to normal.
As a parent, it is your responsibility to allow schools to not get back to their existing curricula for a while and give teachers the space to let children process these emotions.
Whatever the case, the way we handle the hundreds of millions of confused children in the next few months will decide how they handle the world for the years to come.
If you have ideas on a school re-opening curriculum drop me a mail at prasanthnori@gmail.com
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Prasanth