Philly teacher: School District was right not to rush remote learning amid coronavirus | Opinion

What should schools look like in the midst of a pandemic? This is a time to rethink everything, not just plod ahead trying to fit our already inequitable education system into an online version that exacerbates inequalities even further.

While calling to quickly move our education system online, many are ignoring that remote learning exacerbates inequalities. While I share other teachers’ frustrations with the way the Philadelphia School District handled the initial closure of schools, I think the district was absolutely right not to rush into online learning.

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Leaving aside that many students don’t have access to a laptop or internet at home, and that that needed to be rectified in order to give even a semblance of equality — what about students’ learning environments beyond the computer? At school, students are provided with various supports. Some students have disabilities that require in-person help to access curriculum. To provide these supports remotely is extremely challenging and, in many cases, impossible.

Furthermore, teachers spend hours — or days — setting up their classrooms to provide a safe and welcoming space for students when they enter. For many students, remote learning will take place while taking care of younger siblings, in a crowded space with other family members, in a bedroom full of distractions, or with parents arguing in the next room — and that’s just for the students who have homes. We need to approach students with compassion for the inequitable environments they inhabit outside of school.

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One of the first things that should happen as we move to remote learning is that everyone who works at a school should receive training in restorative justice and helping others through trauma and loss. The economic and public health crises we are living through are causing and will continue to cause incredible damage, and our response needs to be based in practices aimed to repair harm and build community.

We need to realize the entire world is experiencing profound loss and trauma right now, and students, especially those who were already living in difficult conditions, are going to feel this acutely. If we are practicing social distancing seriously, that means we will all lose time with friends and extended family. We’ll lose huge milestones we were looking forward to. Many will also still lose loved ones to the virus, and this understanding is producing fear and anxiety. We need to make processing these emotions a central part of the curriculum.

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Beyond this, we need to completely restructure schoolwork to make sure it isn’t cumbersome for students and families. It’s completely unreasonable to expect students to take six or eight classes in front of a computer screen every day.

Instead, remote learning should be time for students to explore the pressing questions we all need to answer to better understand these crises and how to solve them: How have different countries responded to the coronavirus, and what are best practices we should adopt here? What do our hospitals need right now, and how do we mobilize the resources to get necessities to them? How does the destruction of the environment lead to pandemics? How can we learn from historical crises to better understand current ones? What populations are most vulnerable, and how can we help them? What kind of art can give people joy and hope in dark times?

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Because the crisis exacerbates the already stark inequality that exists, it is causing us to rethink a lot about how our society functions, and at least temporarily figure out completely different ways of operating. In this moment, we shouldn’t ignore inequality, but demand that addressing it be central to any policy put forward. We need to stop thinking about education simply as a commodity that our students are losing. At their best, public schools can serve the community by transforming education into a social commitment to our future.

Adam Sanchez is a teacher at Lincoln High School in Philadelphia, the editor of “Teaching a People’s History of Abolition and the Civil War,” and an editor of Rethinking Schools.