New, Distanced, Deeper, More Lasting

What Teachers Need to Make Remote Schooling Work by Kristina Rizga
The Atlantic, April 13, 2020

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‍The Atlantic began its occasional series "On Teaching" to bring readers the voices, wisdom, and essential truths of some of the nation's most experienced teachers now, before the Baby Boomers retire and leave the profession to younger educators. The 14th article in the series is focused on teaching in the time of COVID-19. Like the others before it, this article has the clarity of life lived in real classrooms and expresses wisdom from teachers across the country about what is most important. These 12 teachers want to address disparities in access, growing academic gaps, and difficulties of real connection at a distance. They raise matters of urgent need and posit solutions that are specific, logical, and in some cases, available right now to schools, independent or public, who commit to shift, implement, and support teachers more effectively. First up, the teachers identified that the ability to bend the rules gives educators the trust and measure of autonomy they need to use what they know about how their students and families are coping. From that base, they can shape a responsive curriculum and prioritize student needs over requirements that predated the pandemic. Bending the rules comes with responsibility to build capacity that, in these times, calls for increased peer-to-peer professional development, building structures to share technological knowledge or collaborate on curriculum in new, distanced, and perhaps deeper, more lasting ways.