Pandemic Accentuate the need to Sustain Education
Making this choice is not about money; this is about potentially saving many lives in our community.Schools closed down with every intention of returning to our classrooms on face to face instead, we were kept home, scrambling to take care of ourselves, our families, learning how to Zoom. Nothing felt easy at first. Responding to the incredible demands not only on the students it serves, but also the challenging circumstances of working remotely while tending to their own families, fears and frustrations. As educators came up , teams were formed to begin creating a platform that would be available for online instruction.
Educational reform is complex, difficult work even when there is adequate time, collaboration, funding and planning and learn in the midst of a global pandemic that is continuing to expand challenges.
Comprehensive system in which to teach our standard-based curriculum, but it has also created a new educational option through Virtual which allows for flexibility, safety and connection to your home school. Anchorage should be proud of its school efforts to continue providing a variety of options to educate all of its students. Educators understand that parents are being forced to make life-altering and devastating sacrifices in order to continue their children’s education right now.
We all want this pandemic to end. There’s not a single teacher who prefers Zoom sessions over returning to the classroom and seeing the joy on a child’s face when he learns to decode his first word, or proudly creates something that reflects his/her brain’s power to analyze.
The reality is that while other industries might have had the budgets to effectively plan for unlikely scenarios, has been having to make choices about whether to cut gifted programs or health teachers rather than form a comprehensive pandemic planning team — the result of years of inadequate and diminished funding. If anything, this crisis should prove the need to have robust, comprehensive and sustainable funding and support for all of our public education.
We all want this to end. We want to go back to school, eat at restaurants, hug our friends and bump into an old co-worker at a downtown concert. These are not normal times, and we cannot respond in our normal way of continuing to deprive our schools. Now is the time to invest in public education.