This post is sponsored by WE Teachers, made possible by Walgreens. All opinions are my own. In the provided link, they have free resources on everything from trauma-informed education to bullying and mental well-being.

The last conversation I had with students before the official end of the school year was between me and a few of my seventh graders. We talked about summer plans over Cardi B and Juice Wrld. We shared a snack together. The boys jockeyed for position as “best” virtual game player. The girls talked about the ways they’d miss school and their least favorite teacher. I didn’t participate in that one. As I ended the phone call, I winced at having to hang up. What does it mean to have an unofficial, face-to-face, end-of-school back in March then have an official, virtual end-of-school hangout in June?

One thing’s for sure: that episode wouldn’t have been possible without the relationships I had already established from September to March.

In different circles, I proposed that schools shouldn’t start classes with some of the usual routines we’ve seen and heard. Schools should take a good inventory of the people and things we’ve lost, the ways our relationship to school changed, and what’s drastically changed since our last set of interactions. As the majority of school districts opt to start school virtually, schools have to shift their relationships from the technocratic headquarters for academic learning of the recent past to the child-centered hubs for well-rounded growth for the present and future.

A trauma-informed school has been important to children’s nurturing prior to this moment. A trauma-informed school isn’t just important, but necessary now.

Student relationships are the crux of any classroom pre-, during, and post-pandemic. The interactions must go beyond salutations and axioms. We have a responsibility to get to deeply know children. We need to know how children move within a space, how they react to us and how we react to them and each other, and how they exit spaces as well. We should get a sense of their implicit and explicit expectations of themselves, of us, of their surroundings. Even when we don’t teach them anything and they didn’t learn anything, they still get an education on what education is supposed to mean from us.

We don’t teach subjects. We teach students. Hopefully, we’re also teaching students those subjects, but what they learn is inevitably up to us.

Without those relationships (and how I responded), I wouldn’t have been able to adjust so nimbly to the changes happening in our daily news reports. My students and I heard sirens ten times a day, sometimes more. We had family members, neighbors, and acquaintances pass away with increasing regularity. Even before COVID, though, my students knew poverty, racism, and inequity in their schooling for years. Granting grace and flexibility with my students while holding them accountable for the learning they must do was already part of my rapport with students.

Part of that is knowing that our students have experienced serious levels of trauma at a young age and it’s up to us as adults to navigate that trauma to better inform our practice.

In preparation for the new school year, I would necessarily ask the hardest questions of myself from last year and see what I’ve learned. For example, coming into the school year, I might ask myself if it’s useful to still have whole class sessions. In previous years, I would build relationships through the multiple questions I’d ask students with varying degrees of emphasis and assessment. It could go from simple (“How’s your day been?”) to difficult (“How did you approach getting the answer to this question here?”) and anywhere in between, but I’m listening twice. In the first listen, I’m getting a sense of their process. In the second listen, I’m getting a sense of their person. Two students could have the same or similar process for how they approach school and still communicate that in vastly different ways because of their person. My job would then be to listen for both, process, and understand that just because they’re different doesn’t make it worse.

Unlike in previous years when they’re coming into an environment we’ve initially created (our physical classrooms), we’re entering their homes and spaces for work. Sometimes, they set the rules for the environment. Sometimes they don’t. My job as an educator would necessarily be to respond to this new dynamic by shifting my practice. I might change my pedagogy from whole-class instruction to small-group and appointment-based instruction, so every student felt seen and heard.

To recreate the energy I have in my own classroom, I set up a whiteboard and a video camera as if the students were sitting in front of me. I thought about creating a video daily, but that didn’t help me understand where students were succeeding or needing help with virtual learning. Some students were able to watch the video once and build off it instantly. For others, they saw the video and still wanted me to sit with them for about half an hour just to make sure they got it. Others still had created their own schedule on their own time for when they would complete the work. In all those cases, I credit the relationships I had with them for getting us through the tumult.

In the coming school year, the challenge now is taking on a new set of students and building with them from far away. Our best preparation is to take those lessons from the transition and weave it into our new school year. This conversation is as much about a transfer of power as it is about pedagogy and curriculum. Students inevitably veer into their own schedules depending on what the school scheduling looks like (hybrid, etc.) Our jobs as educators is to keep those connections going so, regardless of whether we’re face-to-face or in virtual space, we still stay connected and building towards something greater.

That’s our best preparation and usually allows us some grace for when we don’t get it right. That’s another lesson we needed pre-pandemic as well.

Please check out the resources on topics including mental well-being and a pandemic-informed community here.

The WE Teacher Award 

Recognition of Teachers that go above and beyond; the WE Teachers Award is a $500 Walgreens gift card, to use in your classroom to support your learning / class needs. Apply yourself or nominate a colleague you think deserves it!  There are 1000 WE Teacher Awards to be granted this academic year.

You can learn more and start the application or nomination process, here.