Back in March, before I felt like an unwilling
participant in the Hunger Games, I looked at The
Great Pause caused by COVID-19 as an opportunity
to reevaluate what I liked from my previous,
unquarantined life, and what I didn’t like. In my initial
thinking, I enjoyed playing basketball with my son
way more than I’d expected, and I was feeling pretty
good about my idea to incorporate more videos into
my lessons once we were “back to normal.” At that
time, I was under the impression that we’d have a
back to normal.
Suddenly, just as I was feeling a little optimistic,
the world shifted another time, and with the death of George Floyd, the country was suddenly, again,
thrown into turmoil. For the first time in my life, I was
scared of the violence that was happening all around
me. My son Oliver and I have spent hours trying to
unravel the disaster that 2020 had become. We grew
cynical. We decided that if 2020 were a book we were
reading, we’d warn the author that a pandemic is a big
topic with lots of nuances. We’d decry race riots as an
over the top addition to a complex plot. When a dying
patriarch gets added to the story line, we’d put the
book down. Too many unrealistic plot twists.
However, as the days are passing, we are realizing
that we are living in a revolution, and we both know that revolutions are when the populace has reached
the end of peaceful protesting and being shut down,
instead, fighting in unprecedented ways. I’m not
advocating violence, but even a 12-year-old historian
knows that a peaceful revolution is largely impossible.
For true, resounding change to happen, a whole lot
of people need to get uncomfortable. A whole lot of
ugliness needs to be acknowledged. A whole lot of
change has to be accelerated. There will be conflict
that is crushing, but also cathartic.
So, when I think about returning to the classroom,
I’m not going to be content with my own little private
protests like never assigning homework, or always
allowing revisions. Instead, I’m going to take my
reimagined plans for student success, which are quite
a bit more than including videos in my lesson, and
make them real, tangible, and known. Educators need
to be intentional about the way we introduce race,
class, and gender. I need to be more intentional about
the way I introduce race, class, and gender. Educators
need to realize that we have a responsibility to teach
our students how to read critically and make accurate
assumptions about what they read. I need to do this,
too. Educators need to prepare students to embrace
the world they live in and find a way to connect with
each other. I must do that, too. It is about time that
educators lay claim to the future by harnessing the power of our students instead of focusing on the data
they might produce. It is time that success means
something very different, something I’m just now
allowing myself to dream up.
A world without high stakes testing? A world
without a Top Ten? A world with equal access to
technology? A world where every child who is not
doing well gets traced and contacted? A world
without grades? Could we possibly dream up a new
story, one that is not dystopian? I’m certainly going to
try, and I hope you will too. As educators we need to
be the ones who say, “Why go back to normal when
it wasn’t a success story?” We need to be the ones
to say, “There’s a better way.” Will you join me in
reimagining success?
Amber Chandler is the coordinator of alternative
education and interventions for Frontier Central School
District in Hamburg, New York. She is a National Board
Certified ELA teacher, the 2018 AMLE Educator of the Year,
and a member of the AMLE Board of Trustees. Amber is
author of The Flexible SEL Classroom: Practical Ways to
Build Social Emotional Learning in Grades 4-8.
amberrainchandler@gmail.com
@msamberchandler
amberrainchandler.com
Published in
AMLE Magazine, August 2020.