“The student is infinitely more important than the subject matter.” Nel Noddings
“Education is not teacher, student, learning, or even testing centered. Relationship before Rigor. Relationships before anything else.” Brad Johnson @DrBradJohnson
The typical start of an upcoming school year usually brings feelings of excitement, anticipations, anxiety, and hope-all with the expectation that a new school year will be successful for the student. Faculty, staff, and school administration all create plans on how to provide a rigorous academic curriculum that will challenge and push our students’ academic capabilities. After the educational disruptions caused by COVID-19 over the past eighteen months, professors, teachers and parents alike are all very eager to recuperate and “catch kids up” for their loss in learning. As a professor, school social worker, and therapist, I can’t think of anything less motivating for our students. We need to focus on meeting our students where they are at.
Anyone who has recently gone back into in-person teaching on a college campus or school building will hopefully feel the way I did. Joy, happiness, and connectedness after being apart for so long. Even under the masks, the student and teacher smiles were able to shine through. But when we look deeper, there is also anxiety-some college students have never been in a college classroom before. They finished high school and started their college experience in their home bedrooms. Depression-many students of all ages lacked peer and social interactions, causing isolation and depressed feelings. Trauma-students had to live in undesirable situations due to death, financial loss, and/or other family stressors brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. While adhering to academic rigor is always at the forefront for our students, we need to connect and meet them where they are at before any academic progress can be made. Without a connection, learning will not occur. As educators, we need to allow our students time to adjust and function socially, emotionally, and academically after an isolating period in their life.
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (September 2021), they compared the percentage of primary care visits where adolescents aged 12 to 21 were screened for depression, screened positive for depressive symptoms, or screened positive for suicide risk between June and December 2019 (prepandemic) and June and December 2020 (pandemic). Results suggested that depression and suicidal concerns increased during the pandemic, among female adolescents. While this statistic may not shock you given the devastating toll COVID-19 took on our mental health, it should help with conceptualizing the amount of students-all ages, that educators will be in contact with. Understanding the ongoing and residual needs of our students will help us meet them where they are at. Relationship over rigor will provide space for academic learning.
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