Fall 2020      Volume 48, Number 4


Professional Development: Rising to the Challenge: The Education that Children Need Now
By Sophie Degener, Ryan McCarty, and Ivy Sitkoski

Document: Column

Introductory Paragraph:  Fall is a time of new beginnings. This year we are facing a challenge unlike any other as we help our students continue to learn in the midst of a pandemic. While I hope that many of us will soon be able to safely return to our classrooms, I know that our world for the foreseeable future will be filled with uncertainty. Across the state, families have been impacted in ways large and small by the virus. If the COVID-19 situation has shown us anything, it is that we can no longer carry on business as usual. In Chicago, where our university is located, the COVID-19 pandemic has put the inequities of our society in even starker relief. City data show that Black and Brown communities that were already underserved are also the hardest hit by the virus due in large part to socioeconomic stratification and unequal access to health care. This makes a focus on educational equity and student well-being all the more important.  This month, we review three books that are particularly relevant for the challenges we all face. The first deals with the importance of teaching for student happiness. It shifts the conversation from a laser-like focus on standards to the importance of choosing activities that help students experience joy in the midst of fear and uncertainty. The second shares the stories of teachers who engage in subversive teaching. These teachers have found ways to meet the requirements of an educational system that privileges standards, a prescribed curriculum, and growth on standardized tests while at the same time challenging the system from within by teaching for social justice. These acts of resistance become all the more important given that the desire to address learning loss associated with COVID-19 can increase the appeal of quick fixes that promise easy solutions but ignore systemic issues. The third book imagines a new educational future altogether, one where teachers expand what counts as literacy and upend once and for all the deficit thinking about students and their families that has plagued the field of literacy education.  While the stakes are high and the challenge is great, we were all inspired by witnessing the everyday heroism of teachers during remote learning at the end of last school year. We know that we are collectively up to the challenge, and we must seize this opportunity to create a more caring and just educational future for all of our students.

DOI:       https://doi.org/10.33600/IRCJ.48.4.2020.43

Page Numbers:  43-46

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