As I watched a news segment on March 18, 2020 entitled, “The New Normal”, that focused on how life would be for the next few weeks and months amid the Coronavirus mitigation efforts, there was a natural connection to the CHES Community Forum at the Patton Public Library that was held on March 10, 2020. Parents, teachers, community members, and administrators got together and had rich discussions about our current educational model and how we could improve our students’ learning experiences at Cambria Heights Elementary School.
The instructional model the majority of our public schools are currently using was established in 1892 by the Committee of Ten whose sole purpose was to create a public school system that would produce students to be successful during the Industrial Assembly Line Era. An innovative idea at the time, this model was designed to group students by age (grade levels) and teach each grade level designated subjects (grade level curriculum) for 180 days a year in a designated school building.
Since 1892, we have drastically changed how we cook, communicate, travel, work, and function; yet, the way in which we educate our children in our public school system is EXACTLY the same. Employers, locally and globally, are looking for far different qualities in their employees than they were 200 years ago and even just a few decades ago. Employers want to hire people who can work in a cooperative group, solve problems using innovative and creative thinking, communicate effectively in multiple ways, take on challenges that are unknown, and persevere through barriers. While using an outdated educational model, public schools are producing students who can chase meaningless grades, answer multiple choice questions on standardized tests, and regurgitate memorized answers.
Little did we know, three days after our Community Forum, everything we knew about the standard educational model was about to be abruptly shattered into a thousand pieces by the Coronavirus pandemic on March 13, 2020 when Governor Wolf shut down all Pennsylvania schools. Across the country, administrators and school teachers scrambled to move our entire instructional model, that has existed for over 200 years, online without any notice, training, or face to face interactions. To say this was a challenge would be an understatement. Make no mistake about it, Cambria Heights School District and all other local school districts will prevail through this pandemic.
As we return to school, our community needs to be willing to create a “new normal” for our educational model within our school walls that reflects our local and global communities’ needs. The question I ask of our public school communities is, “After the cloud of this COVID-19 pandemic has settled, are we willing to go back to a 200 year old model or do we use this silver lining opportunity that has been forced upon us to change our educational system for the better?”
