HUMBOLDT — How do educators learn and move forward from COVID-19?
It’s a question at the forefront of Amber Wheeler’s mind, as she prepares to take the helm as Humboldt USD 258’s new superintendent.
As the Thayer native put it, “it’s about taking what we’ve learned and asking: how do we come out of this?”
Especially when it comes to making sure students’ learning is still on track.
Indeed, “if we just go back to the way it was before COVID ever happened, then we wasted a year,” Wheeler said.
“That’s going to be our first big look, then. … How do we take what was positive and build on it?”
SO WHAT all have we learned?
According to Wheeler, “we are so much better now with kids who have a medical condition where they’re going to have to be out for an extended period of time.”
“We’re going to know how to handle those things because we’ve done it,” she said.
Wheeler also noted how “we utilized technology to do things we’ve never done before. How can we continue that in our classrooms?”
Educators have likewise learned that COVID-related absences have affected not just academics, but social and emotional skills as well.
Wheeler averred, however, she thought smaller schools like Humboldt were better positioned to bounce back.
“We definitely have a leg up on that conversation, because our kids were in school and were learning,” she observed.
“I believe that some of those things we did to mitigate [COVID-19], all of those things that allowed us to stay in school made a huge difference to our kids in comparison to national conversations about this massive [learning] gap.”
And Wheeler also pointed out that “we know the effect that COVID has had on social-emotional learning, and that it’s as much or more than on academics.”
