If there has ever been a time in life that is uncertain, it is now. We are all wondering, what’s next? With school, the questions multiple. How can we keep students safe while giving them an environment where they can learn, grown, and have their needs met? We all have our opinions, strong opinions on everything but we all (parents, educators, communities, and kids) need to work together for our children’s learning. I think we can all agree on that.
This is a sponsored post.
Last year, I introduced you to the Tomorrow, powered by Remake Learning initiative, a campaign to engage students, families, and educators on what the future of education in America looks like and how we can all prepare for the future together. Since they started, they have been doing a lot of listening in group sessions, surveys, and more from over a thousand educators, hundreds of parents, and out-of-school-time providers.
The goal is to learn from the changes over the last 18 months to build a tomorrow where each day holds promise for every child. It stars with making sure the basic needs of each child is met, kids can learn unless they feel safe, valued, and cared for at their place of learning. This may be more of a challenge for some places than others and takes teachers and leaders working together.
The Tomorrow campaign is dedicated to a future of learning to prepare kids for what comes next, no matter what tomorrow might bring. You can be involved as well! Tomorrow will have regular content releases, social media activity, meet-ups and virtual events in Fall 2021 for you. I encourage you to join now to see how you can make an impact tomorrow.
As a mom, I have felt like I had no control over how and what my kids learned at school, until the pandemic. Now, I’m very much involved. I know parents of younger children were even MORE involved during the pandemic.
I’m also on the board of a small charter school in Akron where things get even more difficult. Children there don’t have everything they need during a normal year, let alone a pandemic. Working with the board and teachers during the pandemic to check on students in regard to food, shelter, access to computer or school materials was involved with every child. Having a passion for educating in areas like this is a combination of social worker + teacher + support for the entire family. I’m promoting Tomorrow because they get that teaching involves the whole person, each person, and at different levels of needs.
Before kids can learn, they need their basic needs met – food, clothing, and all-important feeling of being safe at school. I’ve seen first-hand how this impacts learning at the charter school and how a group of passionate educators and volunteers can make a difference, a real difference.
I’ve seen how it helps when a student gets a pair of shoes when their toes stuck out the top of the old, how they respect and love their teachers, and how it impacts their self worth AND grades – we’ve seen how this charter school has overall better grades their traditional public schools and it is because they do things differently. They aren’t stuck in the same old ways of doing education – in a similar way as the Tomorrow campaign. For instance, even though they were in-person (not online like many Akron schools) in 2020/2021, they had to adjust their art show. Usually it is in person.
They were at home during the that time last year so they had an amazing online art show that featured the art for ALL to see on social media.
You can’t always do things the same way over and over, not when things change all around you. We’ve all had to get creative with education and extra opportunities to learn and engage students. For instance, my school held a family photo shoot at no cost to families – what a blessing for families during such an uncertain and unhappy time of 2020! Education is just as much about families as reading and writing. Having that trust and friendship between the school and parents only helps with making sure communication is open between them when it comes to education too.
This Akron charter school is free and they are now enrolling K-5 if you like their approach. If you are in the Akron City Schools district, they even have free bus transportation.
Remake Learning has been around for 15 years, partnering with educators nationwide. They continue to change, as we all are, with their Tomorrow campaign with a mission on what can we all do today to make a more promising tomorrow for our children. If this is something that resonates with you, check out their website and join now for more information.
What comes next is up to us.
