 Moving your classes online, nothing will be the same again. My name is Tracy Tocca, I'm a professor at the Harvard University Extension School. And about a month back, I recorded a podcast on taking your courses online, in which I highlighted a bunch of benefits about remote learning. And today, I want to extend this moving metaphor to call attention to the ways that the coronavirus has catalyzed some important changes in education. And that's education with a capital E. The information from this podcast can be found on a blog at thelearningsciences.com and hyperlinks to all of the references are indicated there. So something that you might not know about me is that I'm very to a diplomat, which has meant we've spent a lot of time moving around. We spent some time in Japan and in Switzerland and in Peru. We went back in the United States for a little while in Ecuador. So moving is something I'm pretty familiar with. And what I can tell you, and I'm sure most of you can empathize with this because you've probably gone through this as well, is that moving can be a stressful time in your life. You have to decide what's really important and assign values to different parts of your life. And things that you might have taken for granted now have to be evaluated. Like, do I bring grandma's gravy bowl, which I never use, and do I carry it and risk breaking it, or do I leave it in storage, or do I give away the kids' baby clothes, or do they come with us, or does the dining room table I love even fit into the new place? So both scaling up to a bigger place and scaling down to a smaller place create challenges. And even after you decide, then you need to negotiate this with the people who you're going to live with. And so in short, you have to return to your roots and really prioritize what is needed. What do I keep? What do I throw away? What do I give away? What do I store? What do I replace? But moving can also be an exciting time, right? It can be an opportunity to prioritize and return to your core and to dust off old but maybe important things of value, and to decide what really matters and to save spaces for those things and give it prominence in the new home. So we are moving to online education. And we have to make many of these same choices as in a physical move. What do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we give away? What do we put into storage? What do we replace? Yesterday I spoke with a friend and colleague about the opportunities created by our current situation. And he said, no amount of professional development money could have thrust such a change on us. And I gotta agree, there is no amount of money or of lobbying that could have slammed the inadequacies of one size fits all testing or called attention to the inequities of access to good teachers and neighborhoods with internet or to the importance of social emotional learning. And no amount of advertising could have brought attention to the myriad of options that are available. Some of them for free to help us reach learning objectives. But thanks to this awful, awful virus, we also have attention being pulled towards the mindless way curriculum is sort of shortchanged so many topics in education including indigenous knowledge and how low tech solutions to teach core concepts and math and science could be employed. So for example, like how stargazing and leaf counting could replace those unauthentic textbooks or the amazing amount of resources that are available to help our kids achieve for free beginning at their starting points not where the school counter says they should be. And maybe even more important to the vital role that teachers play in society beyond just educating in school subjects but also as models of values and as patient and loving caregivers. As the coronavirus makes this change inevitable we hear people begin to chant nothing will ever be the same again. And that's okay. Change is good so long as it's planned like a good move. So as we move to a new kind of education we should plan. We should ask what do I keep? What do I throw away? What do I give away? What do I store? What do I replace? So what do we keep? We should keep the humanity and personalization that many of our teachers use to lift up all of our students and to motivate them. And we should keep detailed formative feedback that develops metacognitive skills and guides kids in learning how to learn. And we should keep the deep rich vocabulary abundant exchanges and as many languages as possible with as many people as possible for as long as possible in as many contexts as possible. And what do we throw away? Well, I think we need to throw away this kind of twisted evaluation system that teaches to the test. We should throw away timed exams except for those things that depend on time like for example learning to do CPR to save a life. And we should throw away self and societal perceptions that teachers are low on the totem pole of prestige in a community. And what do we give away? Well, I say we give away the rows of chairs and we send them to places of worship. Education is an exchange. It's not a dictation. And we should give away budget driven decisions to businesses whose focus is on the bottom line not on people. And what do we put in storage? I say we store away the textbooks which will someday be studied by historians as a testament to what publishers valued in 2020. And finally, what do we replace? Well, in terms of evaluation, I'd say we replace summative evaluation systems for formative ones. We replace performance-based grading for mastery. We replace age-related cutoffs for achievement for experienced-based milestones. As far as the curriculum is concerned, I suggest that we replace curriculum based on subject matters for real world and inter and transdisciplinary thinking. That we replace the K-12 curriculum for a transgenerational lifelong learning. That we replace Western-centric topics to world gifts including indigenous teachings. And that we replace lip service to social-emotional learning for development of the whole child. In terms of resources, I think that we should replace textbooks for bundles of individually curated free and open resources on each topic. And in terms of pedagogy, that we replace busy work with time for reflection. And related to actors, I think we should replace teacher-student dependency to community-dependent upbringings. And that we replace decisions by politicians with decisions by all of the stakeholders in education including students, parents, civil society, entrepreneurs. In terms of environments, I think we should replace the face-to-face alone structure with multi-modalities including the internet and radio and television. And as far as a vision for education is concerned, I think we should replace the idea that education is a privilege with the idea that education is a right and that it can be delivered in a cookie cutter fashion with the idea that it should be differentiated to meet each student at their starting point. So in summary, nothing will be the same again. And after you move, nothing is the same again, right? And that's all right. Moving is a little like death, except where you get to plan. To deal with death, you have to traverse many stages of grief, right? Denial, isolation, anger, then you bargain and you get depressed. And then finally you accept it, right? But once we reach acceptance, we have a choice. We can be resigned or we can be empowered. We can try to return to the old ways or we can seize an opportunity. So as educators, now is the time to ask ourselves, what do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we give away? What do we store? And what do we replace? Thanks for listening.