By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist
Last week, our students and staff enjoyed a well-deserved week of spring break. We are back to school this week with a commitment to finish the year strong academically, socially, emotionally and physically.
It is wonderful to witness our faculty and staff begin to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and we are optimistic that our cases will continue to remain low throughout the last quarter of this school year.
In my last column, I spoke to the weariness that faculty and staff hold right now as they have endured the most challenging school year that anyone of us has ever known. Unfortunately, this weariness has been exacerbated when we hear our state and national leaders lamenting about a set of words that seem to have some stickiness in our vocabulary, “learning loss.”
As such, I thought our readers might be interested in learning more about the condition of learning loss and why this condition is getting so much attention from media sources. A similar comparison to the COVID-19 related learning loss is the pre-pandemic notion of “summer slide.” The summer slide referenced a loss of skills that were held prior to summer vacation. For example, a student may have been able to evidence a skill in May of their second-grade year, but when the student returned in August for third grade they might no longer be able to evidence that same skill.
Advocates keen to address the summer slide shifted school calendars to “year-round” systems where the amount of vacation was spread out over the course of the year and summer wasn’t as substantial when compared with a more traditional calendar. When our school calendars were abruptly shifted to 100 percent remote for the remainder of school year 2019-2020 and school days have been significantly disrupted over the course of school year 2020-2021, conversations like those related to summer slide started with earnest.
COVID-19 learning loss conversations can be tricky to navigate. Some state and national leaders are strong proponents for canceling learning loss with more school (i.e., extended school days, extended school year, summer school) to reduce skill deficits that weren’t taught or were taught with a format resulting in limited skill retention over the last year. Others posit that the social and emotional well-being of students and staff needs to be taken into consideration and the addition of more “traditional” school experiences will overwhelm both students and school employees, most of whom are already experiencing toxic levels of stress.
These two perspectives have been arguing about the value between summer school with a profound focus on academic recovery and achievement and summer camp with a profound focus on creative play discovery and socialization. For me, it doesn’t seem like this issue needs to be either-or, I have to believe that viable solutions with positive impact on both student achievement and student affect can be found somewhere in between.
It’s interesting to think about “recovery” from the pandemic. So many facets of life have been negatively implicated throughout the past year and certainly, academic skill gaps are in that number. It’s important for us, when planning for recovery, to think about learning loss with perspective. We need to be thoughtful and strategic about real solutions to this condition. I worry that broad brushed, knee jerk reactions might translate into illusions of action as opposed to actual evidence of skill recovery.
We need to spend time diving deeply into understanding what our students actually know so that we can develop response plans that bridge gaps between those skills and grade level expectations. To do this, our district is in the process of securing a formative assessment tool that will allow for us to better understand, on an individualized basis, the specific skills students know and are able to perform. And for any skill gaps that are present, we will be well positioned for individualized response.
It has been a gift to be in school since Aug. 5. When I compare our experience to school districts who haven’t been in school since last March, I am so proud of and grateful for our faculty and staff who have made learning happen even with such challenging circumstances. When compared with prior school years, we know learning loss is real, however, our students are continuing to make progress and we hold great optimism for their future.
Laura Hammack is superintendent of Brown County schools. She can be reached at 812-988-6601 or [email protected].
