Education Now Back to School - Moving Forward from Here HGSE experts surface key challenges and concerns for educators, leaders, and families — and share concrete ideas for addressing them. Posted September 23, 2021 By News editor Assessment Counseling and Mental Health Disruption and Crises Early Education Families and Community Human Development Immigration and Refugee Education Informal and Out-of-School Learning For the third consecutive school year, the rhythms of our schools are being disrupted by a global pandemic — a pandemic that has laid bare existing inequities across almost every relevant metric. What are your concerns as you start the year? What are the learning challenges you’re worried about, or the leadership dilemmas you are facing? How are schools supporting students, educators, and families as they reacclimate — and in many cases, as they manage the fallout of significant losses? A panel of Harvard education experts surface key challenges and concerns for educators, leaders, and families — and share concrete ideas for addressing them, with equity at the center. What the pandemic revealed, and how can we meet everyone where they are today, and move forward?Host:Uche Amaechi, Lecturer on Education, Harvard Graduate School of EducationSpeakers:Andrew Ho, Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, HGSEStephanie Jones, Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development, HGSEMary Grassa O'Neill, Senior Lecturer on Education and Faculty Director, School Leadership, HGSEPaul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration, and Director, Education Redesign Lab, HGSEKey takeaways:Slow down. Don’t rush to respond to pressures generated by concerns over academic loss. Lead with talking, engaging, and playing.Truly take care of yourself. Put on your oxygen mask, and then you can focus on helping others.Before measuring anything, let's use data collection to do an educational census. Where are our kids? Are they here? Are they engaged? After that, we can look at other measures.Balance concerns about physical health, mental health, and academic health. It is not either/or. The concerns and challenges are substantial, but addressable, and we can resolve to address them together. "The nature of relationships among the adults within a school has a greater influence on the character and quality of that school and on student accomplishment than anything else. If the relationships between administrators and teachers are trusting, generous, helpful, and cooperative, then the relationships between teachers and students, between students and students, and between teachers and parents are likely to be trusting, generous, helpful, and cooperative. If, on the other hand, relationships between administrators and teachers are fearful, competitive, suspicious, and corrosive, then these qualities will disseminate throughout the school community." - Roland Barth, founder of The Principals’ Center at HGSE, shared by Mary Grassa O'NeillResources:Boston Globe op-eds by Paul Reville:"America’s Schools Need a New Paradigm: Personalization," 9/13/21"Pandemic Learning Loss Can Be a Post-Pandemic Opportunity for Education Reforms," 4/20/21"Schools Must Make Up for Lost Learning," Boston Globe, 9/4/21A guide to success planning from the Education Redesign LabFutureEd's Covid Relief Playbook: Smart Strategies for Investing Federal FundingThree Test-Score Metrics that All States Should Report in the COVID-19-Affected Spring of 2021 by Andrew Ho"A Plan for Standardized Test Scores During the Pandemic Has Gotten States’ Attention," Education Week, 3/2/21A report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education: How Much Have Students Missed Academically Because of the Pandemic? A Review of the Evidence to DateA608 After Hours Podcast Education Now A webinar and newsletter series to shape new approaches to challenges in education Explore All Articles Related Articles Education Now Keeping Our Schools Healthy Experts in education and public health came together to discuss ways districts, schools, and families can put health first when navigating this complex school year. Education Now The Power of Resilience Three experts explore the notion of resilience from a variety of perspectives, offering helpful insight into how to sustain ourselves through challenging times. Education Now Hope and Resilience in Childhood A discussion of concrete ways to support children and adults in developing their capacities to weather the challenges brought on by the pandemic.