“After the pandemic I don’t want to go back to normal. I want to reinvent the system,” said National Board Certified educator Jennifer Leban during a recent conversation with a group of teachers.
In this new system, Jennifer sees students working individually or in small groups mastering specific skills, receiving support from their teachers as needed. Each student can proceed at their own pace, working both at home and in school.
These and other revamped instructional models were already being developed prior to the pandemic, but they existed only in isolated classrooms and schools, and in the imagination of teacher leaders across the country. During the pandemic, many more teachers have seen the great potential of using technology to personalize instruction.
Now, we have a unique opportunity to enhance the quality and make teaching and learning more equitable post-pandemic, but this will depend on whether states can commit to teachers receiving the right tools, technology, and training. So far, teachers have received far too little support.
With this in mind, ExcelinEd and Teach Plus created a set of guiding principles to draw the urgent attention of state policymakers this winter and spring as they develop budgets and plans for next school year. These nine principles reflect the input of teacher leaders from across the country.
They describe how states can and must play a critical role in breaking the one-size-fits-all model of instruction that failed too many students pre-pandemic and is entirely inadequate to address the multiplying and increasingly diverse needs of students post-pandemic.
For starters, states can ensure that teachers can easily access high-quality instructional materials that work well regardless of whether a student is at home, in school or in a combination of both. In Louisiana, for example, the state department of education led a comprehensive review of the ocean of available materials, so that teachers can focus on creating and delivering strong lesson plans.
States can also make sure that teachers have free and easy access to a technology platform that integrates the various instructional materials and tracks student progress. Texas is offering free use of a strong learning management system, which is the backbone of effective personalized instruction. It does not make sense for every school and district to design their own system.
“To use technology to personalize instruction, teachers need access to high quality and relevant professional learning,” said Emily Hogan, a teacher leader from Illinois. “But the learning needs reflect that teachers are in different places in their experience and skills.”
As such, states can make sure that teachers receive strong and differentiated coaching and have enough time to collaborate with their peers to make the huge shift to effective technology-enabled instruction. States can provide the necessary funding and create the structures for competency-based professional learning. Using competitive grants for proven providers, Virginia is offering professional learning for teachers who are interested in learning technology-enabled teaching methods and pedagogy.
Finally, in designing and implementing policies to support teachers, states need to regularly consult teachers in the process of understanding best practices and designing new policies.
The consequences of failure are severe. Students are returning to school in dire need of individualized instruction and services. With strong and effective state support for teachers, scattered islands of reimagining instructional improvement can grow and become the standard practice across the nation.
Matthew H. Joseph is Policy Director for Education Funding at ExcelinEd, and Lindsay Sobel is Vice President of Policy and External Affairs at Teach Plus.
