Ashoka
Will Covid Be The Opportunity We Need To Reimagine Learning?
American schools are embarking on an enormous unplanned experiment to reinvent the routines of education, whether that means meeting in a classroom, or learning outside or online. Scott Hartl, who leads EL Education, sees an opportunity to use this unprecedented disruption to go further, to repurpose America’s schools to pursue different goals, equipped with a new set of tools. But doing so requires more than tweaking classrooms routines and putting lessons online. EL Education has a Reopening Guide for schools and a new book out, We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to Building School Culture. We spoke with Scott this week about the opportunity to reimagine school and learning at this juncture.
Ashoka insight
The really big opportunity is to disrupt the inequity in our educational system, in which some kids get all the support and resources they need, while others scrape by with much less support. We need to disrupt that.
As America reinvents school, it can begin to emphasize nurturing every young person’s leadership, aspiration, a positive concept of oneself. These are all conducive factors to academic success. We have seen this transform schools, and now is the time for entire school systems to align with these ideas.
The problem in American education isn't a lack of good ideas. It's the ability of really strong ideas to scale. Scale is the enemy of complexity, and this work is about moving complex practices into whole systems, already complex in themselves.
So what am I interested in? I'm interested in learning how to transform entire school systems to be about giving this kind of education to every kid. And if we do, then I'm really excited for the future of education.