The Top 5 Things My Students Learned During the Pandemic

I just asked my students

I just asked my students

Photo by Redd on Unsplash

Today was my first day of class for Spring 2022. During my commute, I listened to an interview with Jesse Stommel on Headagogy. Stommel mentioned his skepticism around the idea of “learning loss”… that students have lost learning due to the pandemic … as if learning is a thing that can be tucked away somewhere or dropped.

No, students aren’t “losing learning”…they are simply learning different things. So today I asked students to reflect on what they’ve learned in the last year that they wouldn’t have learned without the pandemic. Here are the top five.

1️⃣ Students learned to cook. Cutting down on eating out encouraged students to explore cooking new and diverse meals.

2️⃣ Students learned to be comfortable being by themselves. Being alone is not always bad. Quite the opposite, learning to be alone is necessary for mental health.

3️⃣ Students learned that the media is powerful, fickle, and not always to be trusted. We have to do our own research.

4️⃣ Students learned not to take friends and family for granted. We need to value the time we have with the people we love.

5️⃣ Students learned to manage their time, work independently, and be accountable for their own learning.

This last one is perhaps the most important.

Students learned to learn.

Honestly, that is my primary goal as an educator.

I can’t teach students everything there is to know about writing. I can’t even teach them about all the different kinds of writing they might encounter after graduating. But I can teach them how to think like a writer … or how to learn and adapt to new and complex writing situations.

The last year in education was far from perfect … but real learning never is. And this has been real learning, y’all … for everyone.