2025 Is the Transition Year We Need: Moving Past the Pandemic

Tough love

I’ll be the first to admit that pandemic rules and COVID-19 exceptions became the norm. Late work? Sure. Missing school? That’s understandable. On your phone? Well, that’s what they are used to. It’s time for someone to say this, and I’m afraid it is me: Tough love needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. I have the unique perspective of teaching eighth-graders of all abilities, and I teach college as well. What I’m seeing across the board is that adults, who admittedly were also traumatized, have been willing to either lower the bar or worse yet, remove it altogether. I’m not immune from this inclination. I have probably (definitely) cleared the path too much for my own children also. 

What can educators do to correct our over-empathizing and coddling? Stop it. That’s really it. Late work should not be acceptable (accepted, yes, but not something we announce or smooth over). Students need to come to school, and attendance needs to be monitored; tough conversations about our students’ ability to show up for their future careers is paramount right now. Students crave adult intervention, and it’s time the adults provide the tough love students need. We can do this while also giving ourselves the grace we deserve, as we too were in survival mode. 

Lead with Authority

Educators don’t have all the answers—I certainly don’t know how to navigate this transition confidently. But, I certainly have a better handle on what works in a classroom because I do have experience, I do have pedagogical strategies, and I do have the institutional knowledge of what students can do. One issue that is swirling, at least in New York, is cellphones. The adults have, up until now, been pretty complicit by our passivity (and perhaps our own addiction to them) on how to handle the giant distraction that is in everyone’s pocket. If we struggle with our own distractibility, we have to know that our kiddos need us to assume authority over this issue and help them.  

As for me, I’m ready for a full, bell-to-bell ban. (Read this blog from almost a year ago, and you’ll see that my opinion has evolved) We are in the midst of a digital citizenship unit, and today students had to write a letter to executives of an app or streaming company. The students’ task was to let them know the impact of addictive design and provide some suggestions. Here are some excerpts: 

Karlie said, “If you minimize the time that people can spend on your app, people will be less addicted to the app, and maybe their devices, and could go back to how their life was before they became addicted. I also think that if we did cut back on the time people spend on their devices, a lot of people would be happier and less stressed.” 

Aubrey’s advice for YouTube is this: “You can also consider adding a feature that only parents can access, it gives you a time limit, and it offers a warning to log off, and if the child or teen doesn't, it can lock, and a parent can choose how long it locks for.”

Josh’s advice to Snapchat, “One idea is limiting how much time people spend on Snapchat, like kicking them off Snapchat for the rest of the day. This could work, and if it did, that would be great for teens. Another idea I have is changing the filters or how much teens can put on their stories. I see people posting so much on their stories and they are just posting, snapping, posting, snapping. It's way too much for them.” 

One thing that was readily apparent was students’ desire for someone else to take control. This is too big for them, and even if it is uncomfortable, we need to provide the parameters that they are unable to manage. This opinion piece, which recently ran in the Buffalo News, elaborates on this hot topic. 

Acknowledge the Elephant, but Don’t Feed It

What is the elephant in the room? The elephant is that our students don’t have the same skill sets that were once taken for granted. I have been acknowledging to them that “locking in” to finish a task is hard, but they have to beat the urge to give up. Education Week’s article, “How to Build Stamina in Reading” provides some great strategies. In my class though, writing has been particularly difficult because of the sustained combination of stamina, attention and independence that students are lacking. During the writing assignment above, many were drifting. I reminded them, cheerleader style, that they can do this, but it is going to take more effort. We can acknowledge that these limitations exist right now, but we cannot feed them. The students have, in part, learned helplessness, and our discomfort with these realities have kept many of us—me included—from addressing the issues. Today was painfully a game of Whac-a-Mole to keep kiddos on task and, trust me, their distress was real. Yet, despite this rough experience, they did it. Out of 111 students, only a handful didn’t complete the two paragraphs within the class period. As I graded them, I acknowledged the effort as much as the content. The elephant is still there, but I’m starving it! 

I’m hoping some of you have ideas about how we should proceed through this necessary transition. Please share with me here and on social media!