Unprecedented v/s New Normal

I have probably heard ‘new normal’ in the last 3 months as many times as I have heard ‘unprecedented’ in the last 13, and it is scary.

The world went through an unprecedented time in the last 1 year and forced all of us to change the way we interact with people, do our jobs, do grocery shopping, protect ourselves; basically survive. We realized the importance of societal responsibility and mental health, the prevalence of racial injustice and economic disparity and our vulnerability as human beings.

Today, at least in the United States, we have enough vaccines that we can once again hug our grandparents, hang out with our friends and plan for having all students back in our classes.After almost a year, we transitioned from thinking about surviving an unprecedented pandemic to figuring out our new normal. But, are we really going back to new normal or just reverting to old normal?

Can we take a moment to reflect on everything we did last year and see what we would like to take with us to the new normal?

I can start…
I hated teaching on zoom but I love the chat feature. It gives me an opportunity to check in with students individually without anyone knowing.

I don’t think I can teach without desmos anymore!

I missed seeing kids in person but I know some students thrived in online learning because they did not have to worry about pressures of physically being in school, they were much more comfortable in their own space.

I am devastated by all the racial hate around us but I am proud of the way students showed leadership about educating themselves and people around them, by organizing peaceful and safe protests and demanding concrete actions from our leaders.

Last year we had to slow down, take a breathe and figure out what our priorities are. I prioritized relationships over content, rigor over volume, conversations over independent work, mastery over speed and I think I want to continue doing that next year too. But this is not possible if my new normal has to include everything from the old normal too. Something has to give.

To all the leaders out there, every time you say new normal and have certain expectations/suggestions for the new normal, don’t forget to clarify what we are replacing, otherwise it is very easy to revert to the old ways and  forget that we saw racial injustice and achievement gap and inequity in every possible way around us, and then the world really would be crumbling in more ways than we can count.