Back To "School" with Dean Heather Lattimer

While so much has changed in these times of quarantine, August continues to signal the end of summer and “back to school”. In past Augusts, many of us typically felt a longing for more summer days and nervous excitement about the start of a new school year. This year, however, the winding down of summer is particularly stressful and challenging for many students, families and educators across the country when we think of what “back to school” will - and won’t - look like.

Like I wrote in last month’s piece, we are not alone. Each one of us is struggling in some areas and finding success in others. The more we can lean on one another, the more wisdom we have to gain. In the spirit of tapping into a community of insight, I wanted to share some wisdom from some of my amazing friends and colleagues. 

For the month of August, I’m inviting one education leader each week to share thoughts about what back to school means and how to grapple with the complexities of navigating so much ambiguity.

In last week's article, we heard from Chris Funk, Superintendent of the East Side Union High School District who shared reflections and insights about how he has to address the "real friction between in-person learning and keeping everyone as safe as possible" as well as how to truly define "structural racism in our public-school system" in order to create an education system that works for everyone.

And in the previous week's article, we heard from Aubrey Merriman, Chief Executive Officer of the Boys & Girls Clubs of North San Mateo County who shared reflections and insights about how he has to "proactively metabolize all that is happening and translate that to an action orientation with authenticity, hope and purpose."

This week, I have the pleasure of sharing insights from Heather Lattimer, Dean and Professor of the Connie L. Lurie College of Education at San Jose State University. I hope Dean Lattimer’s insights and reflections as leader of one of the largest colleges of education in the Bay Area - including “finding joy” in these hard times, the challenge of “crisis fatigue”, and identifying “what learning outcomes really matter for our students?” - help you as you navigate your own "back to school" journey this month.

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Heather Lattimer - Dean and Professor of the Connie L. Lurie College of Education, San Jose State University

What is your hope for the start of the school year?

I hope that teachers, students, and families will be able to find joy. So many of our conversations these days revolve around concerns. And that is understandable. It is absolutely appropriate to be concerned about our children's health and well being, about equity gaps in access to online learning, and about supporting children who struggle to learn in an online environment. But in the midst of grappling with all of these concerns, I hope we are also finding joy in new learning opportunities, new friendships, and new connections. 

What is the biggest challenge you face right now?

Crisis fatigue. We’ve all been living with a heightened sense of anxiety for months now. Health concerns, economic concerns, struggles to balance work and family, racism and police brutality, political animosity, and now wildfires raging across California -- people are exhausted. As a leader, I worry about the capacity of our faculty and staff to continue to support our students in the midst of so many challenges. And I worry about our students as the landscape around them seems to change from one day to the next. I continue to be incredibly impressed by the resilience of our students, staff, and faculty. I’m grateful for their deep commitment to supporting one another and their unwavering dedication to the mission of our college. A key part of my job is to make sure that I’m supporting their efforts, offering relief where I can, and regularly expressing my profound gratitude.  

As we begin this school year, what is your advice to families? To educators? 

We need to recognize that teaching and learning in a virtual classroom can and should look different than teaching and learning in a face-to-face environment. Many of our children, parents, and educators are experiencing extreme stress trying to manage online schooling while grappling with multiple other competing priorities. Adhering to the standard curriculum in this context is unrealistic. Rather than try to replicate face-to-face curriculum in an online environment, it’s appropriate to step back and consider what we want to prioritize. What learning outcomes really matter for our students?  Just because 9th graders have always read Romeo and Juliet doesn’t mean they need to do so this year. Focus instead on matching students with books they love and encouraging them to talk about their reading insights with peers. Our goal should be to build literacy skills and nurture a love for learning, not to drill into the specifics of the Montagues and the Capulets. Now is the time to ask what learning goals we want to prioritize and then to provide educators with the flexibility they need to support their students to achieve those goals.

What is one thing you want people to know?

We are seeing huge discrepancies in learning experiences during COVID. Families in more affluent communities are forming educational enrichment pods led by full-time, well-paid educators. Only a few miles away, we see students sitting in school parking lots trying to get WiFi access so that they can download their weekly assignments. These inequities are not new.  They are simply the latest manifestation of structural injustices that have been central to the design of our system from the beginning. Educational injustices are perpetuated through discriminatory housing practices, repressive wage structures, lack of access to health care, and race and class-based disparities in educational access from preschool through university.  These inequities have existed for generations and the impact is compounded from one generation to the next.   

All of us want to get out of the Zoom boxes we’ve been living in for the past six months, and it is tempting to say we want to get back to “normal.”  But our previous “normal” didn’t work for many of our children, families, and communities. We need to engage in hard conversations about ending systematic oppression and enacting structural change. We need to work together toward a new, more inclusive, equitable, and just post-COVID normal.  

What are you reading or listening to these days?

• Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom is a powerful indictment of our education system as an industry of oppression. The book issues a compelling challenge to educators to become co-conspirators in working for radical change.     
• The Black Minds Matter webinar series led this summer by Drs. J. Luke Wood and Donna Ford shared important research and offered powerful testimonials about the lived experiences of Black students in schools.  A must listen for educators, researchers, and policy makers.

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Aditi Goel brings over 20 years of nonprofit and education expertise and impact to the work of solving critical problems around equity and opportunity, particularly in the education sector. She is the Founder & Executive Director of P16 Partners, a strategic consulting organization, for clients across the education, social impact, nonprofit, private, tech and philanthropic sectors. Connect with Aditi on LinkedIn and at P16 Partners.