Reclaiming the Joy in Schools

As I reflect the successes and challenges of the previous school year and work with my team to plan for the upcoming school year, the concept of reclaiming the joy in schools is a theme that I can't get out of my head.

We know all too well that the past several years in public education have been exhausting.  Schools have focused on the increasing behavioral and social emotional needs of students.  And, while these needs have intensified, adults have experienced their fair share of struggles as well.  No one appears exempt.  A significant number of employees and community members report feeling overwhelmed, and this dynamic often results in stressed relationships.

For simplicity's sake, I am suggesting that too many people have lost their sense of joy in school.  One way this has manifested itself is the student attendance crisis across the country.  Another is increased absenteeism among school employees nationwide.  In Arlington, we see it in our data on student belonging, which decreases as students progress through the system and is more pronounced for our students of color.  I know that this phenomena is not unique to Arlington.  The thought of students and teachers losing their sense of joy and connectedness to school is disheartening to me, and I believe it is time that we start turning this around.

This spring I participated in one of the AASA Wonder Hour sessions with Ray McNulty and Steve Braun.  As part of a discussion of Artificial Intelligence, they facilitated an activity that included a discussion of a component of Amazon's business strategy.  Rather than obsessing over predicting what will change, Amazon tries to identify concepts that it believes will remain constant--for example, people will be always attracted to lower prices.

My first thought was that this way of thinking might be comforting to people who are feeling overwhelmed.  People like routine and consistency.  It doesn't negate the need to accept and navigate the rapid pace of change.  But, it could help calm people down if they spent more time focusing on what we are fairly certain will hold true over time and less time obsessing over things that they cannot possibly know or control.  I believe that one societal constant is that people will always need other people.

I have seen many amazing examples of people caring for each other during recent years, but I have also seen increasing examples of the opposite.  So, as it relates to reclaiming the joy of school, it would seem that a simple first step is to try to make sure that we all commit to being nicer to each other.  This became the root of my message when I addressed groups at many of our various year end functions.

My team recently presented at the Learning 2025 Summit in Washington, D.C.  The title of the presentation was Arlington Central School District's Journey to Personalizing Learning.  The presentation shared our work on how we are utilizing the concepts of the Learning 2025 Framework to develop an approach to personalizing learning for students.  We gave examples of how we are tying our equity work to our personalized learning model, how student services work is reflected in our efforts to personalize learning, and specific examples from buildings at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.  You can access the presentation by clicking here.

Like most schools, Arlington is identifying, implementing and refining specific strategies to support its goal of increasing belonging.  Some examples include establishing and advisory period at the middle schools, empathy interviews with students, staff surveys, responsive classroom, and individual building improvement goals.  However, when it comes to reclaiming the joy of school, I think it starts with something that we can all do--make a concerted effort to be nice to each other.