Webinar on Early and Middle Level Education in Disruption

I recently had the incredible opportunity to moderate this UVM webinar featuring these amazing educators: 1st grade teacher Hannah Luce, early literacy expert Juliet Halladay, early and middle level grades expert Jessica DeMink-Carthew, and 7th/8th grade teacher Jeremy DeMink. They all had really valuable information, suggestions, and resources to share, so I’m making it into a blog post to highlight the key take-aways. One of the most interesting, and perhaps obvious in retrospect, things to me was that the advice and suggested supports for learners from early childhood through middle school are not very different. We all need the same things, just tailored to our developmental level. (I also found this webcast from the Society of Research in Child Development on The Science of Learning and Teaching at Home to be very informative and to cover many of the same points.)

Pandemic Learning: Coining a term for the current situation is difficult since this is unchartered territory. We tried to at least be realistic about what the current learning environment is so that we could then talk about supporting learning within that context. So what is pandemic learning? It’s remote learning in crisis. This emphasizes the even greater than normal need to attend to social and emotional wellbeing for you and your children (and for teachers!). And the remote part emphasizes that there are still teachers in charge of instruction, which helps to differentiate the parental role as a coach or manager, helping with motivation and encouragement, and schedules and time management.

Which brings us to Motivation and Independence: Authentic activities that children value and where children are set up for success are inherently motivating. While games or stories (books, shows, movies, etc.) might be obvious examples of activities that motivate children, they are not the only options. Giving children choice, including an appropriate amount of challenge to match their skills, and providing opportunities for collaboration are also motivating. In fact, making choices is addressing the need for autonomy and the development of independence as children move towards middle school. Providing menus of options; helping children break large tasks into smaller, manageable pieces; having them practice setting timelines; and providing frequent check ins with opportunities to reflect and celebrate successes will support this critical area of growth.

Doing this implies a certain amount of Schedule and Routine: We’ve been over this before, but routines are comforting to children because they’re predictable, and therefore support their emotional wellbeing. Another framing of routines is as norms that allow for sustainability (or more bluntly, sanity!). For example, upper elementary and middle school students might have a rule of “ask 3 before me,” where they must consult at least 3 people or other sources before turning to you for help. This means that you are not constantly needed throughout the day!

Similarly, schedules help children with the development of executive functioning skills by learning how to manage emotional and cognitive needs to achieve a goal (i.e., plan and prioritize tasks, initiate and maintain focus on tasks, and organize time to accomplish tasks). Noteworthy is that the creation of a schedule is tailored to the individual child through their choices, so it is not one-size-fits-all. You or they might notice which activities are preferred and which are not preferred and alternate them in their schedule. You or they might provide incentives or rewards for completing less favorable activities, like going outside to play or watching a show. Furthermore, schedules include more than just academics. As adults we try to plan when we’ll get in a jog or an exercise class, when we’ll prepare dinner, or when we’ll connect with a friend. Including things that bring us joy is critical, and again supports choice-making, independence, and executive functioning. We’ve talked about checklists as a way to create this type of schedule with kids, but having a morning planning meeting to do this together is another way. And, another key point is that supporting social and emotional wellbeing requires knowing when to take breaks, so the schedule must have some flexibility to stop when frustration levels are too high or to make changes when unproductive habits appear. As this article notes, focusing on social and emotional learning is a great way to get ahead of meltdowns by being proactive rather than simply reactive.

And in case it wasn’t clear from everything above this, putting Social and Emotional Learning and Wellbeing at the heart of everything pandemic-related was likely the biggest takeaway. Keeping our eyes on the big picture of having children come out of this experience physically and emotionally healthy is also in the interest of having them ready to learn and return to school as usual. For younger children, this means helping them to put words to the way they are feeling and to co-regulate those emotions by guiding them towards relaxing activities like walks, bike rides, games, puzzles, Legos, and so on. For anxious kids or those who struggle more with emotional regulation, they may need more than variation, they may need a cognitive distraction. For older children, who are developing their own identities and self-images, they need to maintain relationships with peers. Video chats for talking, sharing a meal, playing a shared game, or engaging around a shared interest allow for these connections and can remove awkwardness and pressure around interacting in this new environment. Social and emotional well being is not just for our children either! Teachers and parents also benefit from attending to their feelings, and we all benefit in terms of our attention, memory, and learning. Emotions matter for decision making, for relationships, for health, and for performance.

So what do we do when things are not working? Remember these guideposts:

• Am I being realistic about what I can do in the context of pandemic learning?
• Am I taking on too much responsibility for my child’s teaching and learning instead of allowing for motivation and independence or asking for the teacher’s help?
• Are my child’s non-intellectual developmental needs being met (Maslow before Bloom)? Are our actions in keeping with the big picture goals?
• Use your own Executive Function skills to reflect on what might need to be adjusted. Do we need to take a break? Trust your judgment, and return to things out of the moment by asking and listening, problem solving together, and encouraging self-advocacy but also recognizing when you need to advocate for your child.

Finally, we considered the potential Opportunities that might come out of this pandemic learning environment. First and foremost, hopefully a greater awareness and attention to social and emotional learning alongside academic learning will result. Hopefully we as parents will have a better understanding of our children in multiple ways, that allow us to support them emotionally and academically in a more personalized way. We will have more practice at interacting with school and teachers and supporting the school-home environment to allow learning to occur more naturally across borders and contexts. Perhaps our relationship with technology will be more balanced after prolonged overuse and over-reliance. Maybe our knowledge of where to go to find high quality and effective digital resources will be enhanced.

And we ended on the reassuring note that all kids will have experienced this unusual disruption when school resumes and that teachers are quite used to and capable of handling kids with wide ranges of abilities entering their classrooms. And when all else fails, turn to humor! Some of these are hilarious!