Here’s our opportunity to take ideas and make them into words. To start to share those words with others who know that there’s another way forward for education. We’re educators who saw the potential to change education for the better when we returned to school after COVID-19, only to have those hopes dashed by education’s rush to “what it was before”. This put us in a panic response: we couldn’t accept going backwards, so we decided to fight. We took the best parts of COVID school and kept them going. We changed and continue to change to meet the context of the moment in one of the most dynamic environments on Earth - a classroom with other bodies in it.
This blog is an attempt to spread that fight outside of our little corner of the universe - our attempt to engage in the coaching and collaboration discussion on a wider scare. To share. To discuss. To debate. To argue. To chart a path forward. To make a larger impact in more classrooms because we know what we do works, and we want to know what works in other classrooms.
So, who are we? We’re Dave and Dani - high school English educators - both of us with seventeen years in the high school classroom. We’ve taught in affluent districts, Title 1 schools; a mixture of ESOL, Special Education, Advanced Placement. We’ve taught Russian Language, Peer Tutoring, run writing centers, and coached athletic teams. After COVID, where we are with our careers, testing and revising these ideas, and engaging in coaching and reflection, we’ve come to the conclusion that although some life-long educators may claim that no changes need to be made to classroom or school structures, it is clear that in a post-COVID reality, education needs to be ReNormed in order to be reformed because all of us need to change as the world changes.
That brings us to this blog, Education ReNormed. To begin, we’d like to share some of our practices and philosophies. Let us know what sticks and where you think we’re flying off the handle. Our next post is going to go into our teaching philosophy and how we start our classrooms and coaching conversations with colleagues.
