There has been a lot of talk about learning loss and "catching up" in the news and media. However, during these first few months of our new school year, the topics of conversations I'm hearing across schools are very different. Educators are far less concerned about specific content skills, chapters, or material, and more focused on students, their social-emotion health, and their ability to focus, take turns, or "do school."
For the past 20 years, we've been talking about the 4 Cs of 21st century learning: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity. This lens has reshaped the way instruction has looked across many classrooms, including my own practice. I adjusted much of my instructional practice when thinking about designing activities and experiences that promote these 4 C's for a more engaged classroom and authentic teaching and learning environment. Thinking about designing instruction, experiences, and spaces, with a focus on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity fundamentally changed who I was as an educator in and out of the classroom.
4 C's of Post-Pandemic Learning
As we return to something far less than normal, I'd suggest we need to look toward a new set of C's for a post-pandemic landscape. We need to nurture Connection, Compassion, Culture and Climate. While the "first 4 C's" provide a framework for looking closer at instructional practice, these "new 4 C's" address how well and ready our students feel to put these practices into action. Together, both sets of C's can work collaboratively from an instructional viewpoint as well as a social-emotional perspective to strengthen Agency, Empathy, and Empowerment in our students. These are emotional competencies all educators want to help their students develop. Fostering a learning environment where educators can design and deliver instruction through a lens of connection, compassion, culture, and climate will help promote and strengthen these competencies.
My universe is elementary, but if the upper grades are anything like our K-5 experience, words like agency, empathy, and empowerment are not at the top of our lists when describing students' current experience.
Student agency is a buzzword that has been hard to define in terms of what it looks like, but seems easier to identify when missing. I'd suggest that’s exactly what we find our students missing when the rituals and routines of daily classroom activities become problematic. I have heard countless descriptions of executive-functioning breakdown, short-fused refusals, or constant challenges with things like waiting turns, navigating the cafeteria, or working together. The social-emotional opportunity loss far outweighs any measurable (but equally educational) content, and deserves equally deliberate and focused attention if we are serous about "catching up" the whole child.
Social-emotional learning and executive functioning are two clear examples of focus areas and buzzwords in our business. For all of the SEL focus and available professional development, there almost has to be a back-to-basics foundational focus in order to take those next-level SEL steps. How can we have a conversation about students' ability to employ effective executive functioning strategies when their environment, routines, and instructional environment has been continually adapting to changing guidelines, initiatives, and expectations? Can our climate handle the culture shifts we are demanding?
🔗Connection
Now more than ever, it's all about relationships. Relationships develop trust, encourage risk-taking through partnership and support, and create pathways to communicate for (and about) learning. It's no surprise that connection was the first and fastest loss when shifting to remote, then hybrid, and even still in our modified environments. It's not just about masks and spacing, it's about the play, the small group or 1:1 closeness, and especially the cafeteria, snack, and recess where students work out the social dynamics of childhood.
💙Compassion
It's easy to say (and easy to see) that students are struggling, but so are classroom teachers, support staff, and specialists. Just being in our buildings is no return to normal, and I think we all underestimated the lagging toll this past two years has taken, and will continue to take, on the social emotional health of our learning community. For every student we see pop on the surface, it's safe to assume there are a handful with less visible struggles that we need to attune to before we can ratchet up the content demands, or we will only enhance the struggle.
🏫Culture
Culture is often described as the values and norms of a school or system. It's the structure that determines how values and beliefs transfer toward an environment of learning. This is the staff, the tone, the sights, and the sounds of a school. It's the hallways, playgrounds and staff rooms. It's the messaging on the walls and cafeteria. When we look at the challenge of deploying initiatives at a district or building level, whether it's new content-curriculum or the work of diversity/equity/inclusion, it's the culture that can impact how well any initiative will succeed, and the expression of how well stakeholders feel about their culture (and efforts to shape it) creates the climate.
🌡Climate
Climate is the temperature of a shared space. Where culture focuses on the way things have always been done; climate is actions and behaviors that demonstrates feelings among students and staff. The frequent comparison is that climate refers to the way people feel about school, while culture is defined by the way people act in a school.
There’s a relationship among these 4 C's. Connection is a byproduct of compassion. Building relationships and employing empathy throughout our buildings develops an environment that cultivates relationships and builds connections. Similarly, climate is a reflection and expression of culture. If we want to shift the perceptions, feelings, and emotional temperature that reflect the climate of our community, we need to examine the values, routines, and rituals that identify its culture.
While the line between culture and climate can be blurry, it's clear to see that our sets of values and norms, as well as our behaviors and feelings about teaching and learning in the past two years, have been put to the test. Just like we preach, we need to analyze the data, adjust our approach, and leverage what we've learned if we're serious about learning and growth.
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