Lessons from the pandemic

Students, teachers, and schools learned a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the challenges and opportunities were already there, just emphasized by the global health emergency, says Johnny Lupinacci, associate professor at the Washington State University College of Education.

Lupinacci teaches future teachers and education researchers, and he was a high school teacher himself. He points out how many ideas and issues within schools—like different learning styles and the digital divide—were already there. The pandemic brought them to the forefront.

In this episode, Lupinacci talks with magazine editor Larry Clark about lessons learned during and after COVID-19, from the need for scientific literacy to improving how we teach kids.

Transcript

Washington State Magazine webisodes podcast

Episode 37: Lessons after the pandemic

Larry Clark  0:07  

Students, teachers and schools and all of us learned a lot during the COVID 19 pandemic, but many of the challenges and opportunities were already there. The global health emergency brought them to the forefront. 

Welcome to the Washington State magazine podcast. We bring you stories and conversations about Washington State University, the state and the world. I'm Larry Clark, editor of the magazine. 

Johnny Lupinacci is an associate professor at the Washington State University, College of Education. He teaches future teachers and education researchers, and he was a high school teacher himself. I talked with him about lessons learned during and after COVID 19, the need for scientific literacy, improving how we teach kids, the digital divide and awareness of mental health. 

[music]

Hi, welcome to the Washington State magazine podcast. [Johnny Lupinacci]  It's great to be here. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and how you ended up in at WSU?

Johnny Lupinacci  1:09  

Sure? Johnny Lupinacci and I am in the College of Education, and I'm an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Translate that I teach future teachers, and I also get the privilege and honor of teaching future education researchers in doctoral programs here at WSU. So it's pretty, pretty great opportunity to work with future teachers, future ed researchers, and stay really connected to education, which is a passion of both mine and yours, Larry.

Larry Clark  1:42  

Absolutely, you know, it's one of the great things about working in Washington State, you know, is this passion for education. And you were an educator yourself, I understand. 

Johnny Lupinacci  1:51  

Absolutely. So I would say that's my primary identity. I'm a teacher. I, you know, learned I wanted to become a teacher early in my undergrad college career, back in Michigan and became a high school teacher, and absolutely loved teaching math and science and had great time working in high schools and a variety of grades over the years, and it led me to believe that schools are places where we can work together to make our communities stronger, our country stronger. Because as cliche as it is, you know, the children are our future, and classrooms were exciting places to work with those children and sort of double down on my investment in our future. So it was, it was really something I enjoyed, but I believe there was a lot that could change through schools, that we could do things better in our schools. 

We could do more to, you know, teach different kinds of learners. We could do more to, you know, teach differently than many of us learned, especially as a math teacher, that was a passion of mine, and we could just kind of connect the dots a little better. It's like, we know we can do better. How can we work together to do more in schools? So I would, at times, get a little frustrated as a teacher, and think, man, can't we be doing this better? And I would read research, and that led me to get a PhD and become a researcher in schools, because, I mean, you got to put your money where your mouth is right if you believe right, there can be change. Informed change is my favorite kind of change. And where do we get the information to make informed change in education, education research. 

So I got my PhD, and upon completing that, went on the job market and landed now, and I tell people, is the best place in this country to teach teachers here in Pullman, Washington. So I'm a proud Coug.

Larry Clark  3:46  

That's great. And you know, you're talking about change, and informed change. And one thing we're looking at, five years ago, we had the COVID-19 pandemic and a huge impact on our schools, and there were a lot of things that changed. What briefly, you know, happened, you know, with our schools after the pandemic hit?

Johnny Lupinacci  4:10  

Yeah, Larry, that's a big question. We can kind of hit on the on the big points, because I think we're still learning that, which is an important thing to name the moment, right? We're still, I mean, we could say we're post pandemic, but we're still not going a day without making a decision that somehow was influenced or changed over that period five years ago, where the entire world went into a bit of a frenzy, right, right? And I would like to say we always get stuck on some of the negatives, but not to say there's a silver lining and something is massive as COVID-19, you know, a pandemic that hits the world was, but there was also so many great moments to pause you. And sort of really focus on things that were already happening, that were brought, brought to the forefront. 

So I think in schools to kind of narrow it. I mean, our whole, you know, world is still learning from that moment, but here we are, five years later, in our schools, you know, we're, I would say, equally as impacted as all of our workplaces were, as, you know, as world politics and world economics were, but our schools, you know, we knew there, there were some things that we weren't doing well, and in that moment, those things became, you know, ultra clear.

 So, you know, gaps that were there in ways that you know we weren't reaching all learners. We really that, I'll say that came into focus really clear during the pandemic and we also learned that, not only in negative things, we learned that because, remember, everything went online. I mean, for the most part, it closed down and it went online. 

And so, you know, most of us classroom teachers thought, How in the world is this going to work, right? But there were, there already has been decades of really great teachers who had been teaching in sort of a hybrid delivery, or who were doing, you know, successful online teaching. And I'll back up, because I will say we kind of knew what good online teaching was before the pandemic. But like everything, and listeners, you can probably relate to your workplace. Sure, we've had, like, teleconferencing and we've Skyped or Zoomed people into meetings, but now that was the primary platform, that same thing was happening in all of our classrooms. And so some really great things that seasoned or veteran or expert online teachers already knew we were learning at a fast rate, and teachers can learn pretty quick. Go figure, teachers are good learners. We'd hope so, but they are by and large, and so, you know, they were learning from those expert teachers pretty quickly. 

And also, I'll kind of call them interesting surprises for me as a classroom teacher. And when I say classroom teacher, I mean primarily in a face-to-face setting. Right? Like most of our teachers around this country, especially in the state of Washington, we have great public schools here, so we primarily think about teaching as happening in a physical classroom. But that's changing. Here we are five years from the pandemic, and we're seeing more online and hybrid ways of teaching young people in our communities. And so in that moment where we all switched to that, there was a learning curve, but I would say pretty quickly, we started to learn that some of our students actually learned better in these formats, asynchronous became, you know, a word I probably maybe only used a few times in my life, until the COVID-19 pandemic, and it became, you know, regular vocabulary, common discourse. You know, asynchronous learning, ways that we can access multiple ways of not only learning something, but being assessed in it, that we can be engaged in a different way that wasn't hidden by the traditions of our physical classrooms. 

On the flip side of that, Larry, we learned some of our students thrived in the in-person, physical classroom, yes, and so they suffered their learning suffered during the pandemic. So you know, it, it. It wasn't a one size fits all, and we knew that in education. But like most traditions and most patterns and habits of the past, it's hard to break them, even when we have good information that say, Hey, students learn really differently. Before the pandemic, we knew that there were introverted learners. There were learners who, you know, really thrived with digital tools, right for learning, yes, in and we were implementing them, but not with the same kind of gusto, I'll say, or confidence that we are now. 

So not that there's silver linings and things like pandemics. I don't want to, you know, try and shine a really difficult moment for the world, and especially our, you know, children. But you know, we learned a lot, and I see that today. Here we are kind of five years out. I see school districts, schools and teachers, you know, really implementing things they learned during the pandemic, making their classrooms more accessible, even the physical classrooms, adding on those dimensions that they learned work during the pandemic, you know. So some of the big things right, we learned a lot about the importance of digital infrastructure. Structure, we can have a whole separate podcast or conversation or coffee sometime, Larry about, you know, the digital age that we're in, and the pros and cons of that, but we can probably all agree listeners and both Larry and I that we learned in that moment that investment in strong digital infrastructure was imperative, because where we had that, you know, we adjusted and we adapted our communities. Were able to find a way to come together where we didn't, kind of refer to that as the digital divide, right? And the gaps and access to good internet connection. We learned it's not, it's not only what we'd hope it would be, it's far below that. It's subpar. On whether we come at that through an equity lens, is that really what we want for all children, or just from an achievement lens and our nation? Are we really teaching young people what they need to know, and do they have access to that? So we learned about digital infrastructure, the digital divide. 

We also learned, and I'll come back to this. It was a tough time for the world, children and people in our community, whether it's Washington listening to this or you're more further out, it was a tough time for all of us and all of you. So we learned about the importance of wellbeing right. That was a moment where we really might experience new fears, new anxieties, or, you know, existing ones got heightened. So investment in mental health in the state of Washington, you saw a lot of attention turn towards social, emotional learning supports for our students, teachers and people in schools, which extends when we talk about public schools, Larry, we're talking about our community. So it's not only the people who are on the payroll, but it's all the people who make a public school system work, right? And we we learned that their wellbeing, their emotions, right? Their physical and mental health mattered. Go figure, of course, we knew that if you're suffering in those areas, that's hard to learn. We knew that before. But boy, we knew it in mass during the COVID times, and I would say that's carried out past that. 

You know, some people may even still consider this moment we're in five years after, still part of that pandemic era. So we're in that. The other thing in schools, you saw a big lesson learned, or at least some big changes in policy and procedure. It's around food, right? We all had it like we all had a moment of like, Whoa. Where is our food coming from? How do we get it? How do we feed one another? And for a lot of kids in this country, school is where they eat solid meals. So we saw states, you know, put forth legislation to provide food for all you know, this is we're in that moment right now where there are a handful of states, Washington being one of them that that's being discussed at the legislative level. Why not have food for all the kids in our schools? Right? Because it's good in good times. It's also necessary in tough times. And you never quite know right now, which kids are in good times and which kids are in tough times. So we see a lot of attention to food or what some people are calling food security, right, or food stability in our school communities.

Larry Clark  13:32  

And I've often heard, you know, you can't learn if you're hungry. 

Johnny Lupinacci  13:35  

Well, that's a fact that you know. We know from ed research that we're our best learners when we have the nutrients we need to grow in our brains and bodies, to pay attention, you know, to be to be our best learner, we need to be fed. So it kind of comes on. It falls under common sense in a democracy, right? If science is telling us kids need nutrition, good nutrition, the pediatricians are saying, hey, it's really important that these kids have good meals, and we know in our communities that that might not be possible for all families. Well, the least our public schools could do right is do whatever they can to provide that. And so you're seeing that by and large across our country. You know on the legislative ballots right now in budget discussions, how do a lot of places went to that during COVID and coming back from COVID, and they're saying, hey, this, we've seen big impacts from that, positive growth, more student achievement from that. And so they're pushing to continue those things. So those are important. 

We also learned about the importance of physical activity, right? Because we used to just know, hey, we're going to go to school, we're going to have recess, we're going to play outside, we're going to have gym, you know, we're going to have, you know, good phys ed. 

We're going to have sports and activities, extracurriculars through our schools and I'll extend that, you know, for our listener, if you don't have a student in schools, you know, in your community, your public schools also provide kind of activities to go to, whether it's that you enjoy football and basketball or volleyball and wrestling, or you enjoy going to see, you know, the production of Romeo and Juliet, right? These builds community, yeah? Choir performances, all these things. It builds community. You know, our country, you know, our democracy, is built around those events, those kinds of connections. Um, so we learned when those went away, we all kind of suffered in a way we hadn't quite understood or lived in. None of us had quite lived that experience yet. Um So you're seeing a lot of renewed energy and investment in those kinds of programs and attendance at those events. 

Because folks, you know, even though we're at a moment in our country where there's some big divides, we really do all enjoy coming together. That's right, despite what you know, some news headlines might be persistently telling us we spend a lot of time together in shared spaces, and we're pretty good at it. So our schools are kind of those places in our communities, and we're seeing that. 

I'll plug this again, because, you know, Larry, I teach future teachers, and I work with a lot of our teachers, not only in the state of Washington, but around our country, and there's been I talked about that digital literacy and the digital infrastructure and that change and how we teach. Teachers are learning to teach in new and different ways, and they're doing a really good job at it, which is kind of exciting, right? It's like they're embracing all kinds of new technologies AI in the classroom, ways to you know better, utilize our digital technologies to engage students, to mentor young people, to build community in ways that adapt to the possibility of, hey, we got through COVID-19, but we could have other versions of world crisis that require us to be ready to adapt. And so I'm seeing a lot of teacher training programs shift and change. A lot of teachers out there learning, whether they're veteran teachers or new teachers, there's a lot of learning going on. 

And one thing, Larry, I always say, you know, I'm never short of words, if you're listening, you could tell that this guy could talk forever. But Larry, there's one thing I say is that learning is contagious. It's infectious to kind of stick with our visiting back to COVID-19 language, it spreads. And when you're learning as a teacher and students are learning what you're teaching them, it's like we're firing on all cylinders. And so it's an electric moment in classrooms, because teachers are learning, I'd say, at a rate that we've maybe not experienced in our lifetime, because the change in things is so rapid, and young people are so excited about that change, they're engaged. 

It does mean we have sometimes some new difficulties in classroom management and behaviors, because when I say the students are engaged and they’re electric, it doesn't always mean in the ways of like, sitting at your desk and, you know, reading silently, a lot of antiquated assumptions about what learning looks like. And that's an exciting moment, because learning is contagious, and it's spreading. 

You know, the other interesting thing, Larry, that we're seeing, and we don't quite understand all of the nuances of this, because this is a complicated dimension that our listeners can relate to most of us. We did a lot of testing in school. We took a lot of tests. And my students, I'm a little old. My students, they have, they have strong memories of taking lots of tests since they were real little. You know, I remember taking them once we got to a certain grade, and they were really important in our country at fourth and eighth grade, and then at the end of high school, when you're looking to apply to colleges and whatnot, you know, you took these big standardized tests. And there is a lot of discussion out there of the impacts, the pros and cons of standardized testing in our schools. Whole area of ed research there, but by and large, one of the things that happened coming out of the COVID era is we're questioning the role those big standardized tests play in our schools. Yeah, we need data on what students are learning. But is that the best way to get that information and implement it? 

So there's a there's a changing landscape on that front, whether we can attribute it to COVID 19, but everything stopped, and when everything stops, and we have to take a deep breath and kind of figure out where to go next and when. When we do that with patience and humility, not hubris, like, Hey, I know exactly where to go. But we turn to experts, right? We turn to, you know, researchers who have looked and studied these kinds of things, and we say, hey, we have stopped, and we're about to get going again. Is there anything we want to do differently, right? And one of those conversations is around standardized tests. And so yeah, the research was out there, but it wasn't always being listened to. There was an opportunity with that pause. Kind of call it a planetary pause, right. Hey, we go to bed each night. We have to take breaks, right? If you're a runner, you can't run indefinitely. Sometimes you gotta take a pause. So I don't want to, you know, shine the COVID-19, but you know, if there is a silver lining in it, we paused, you know. And as we move forward, we're discussing change, which, to me, man, that's democracy.

Larry Clark  21:10  

Definitely. You know, there was so much discussion at the time, too, around teaching kids about science, yeah, and using it, you know, as I've heard the term teachable moment. Well, COVID-19 was a chance to learn all kinds of things, including about how science works. And in some of your work, you know, you do some work around scientific literacy, and really how important that is. So now you know five years later, what did COVID-19 mean for enabling kids and teachers to really embrace this idea of learning about science, how it's done, and the literacy around it?

Johnny Lupinacci  21:57  

Well, Larry, I'm a big fan of project-based learning and sort of learning in real life scenarios. And I would never wish COVID-19 upon any community,  right? But kids were learning together with adults in our community information in real time and in many cases, applying it to their learning, right? And so I mean all the things, if we think about that era that were happening in the world, I mean, you know, big discussions around climate change that science is informing us about, but these are political discussions. These are and when I say political, I don't mean Democrats and Republicans for our listeners in North America, you're familiar with that constant debate, but what I mean is like, anytime communities come together to make an informed decision, that's political, right? So I'm going to separate that from sort of the culture war that we can sometimes refer to in media on things but just in general, anytime we come together as like a city council or a school board or a group of administrators and listeners in your area of work, you know your boards, your executives, your workers, our communities, our neighborhood associations, you know our schools, our churches, our libraries, all these things we're trying to make decisions in the interest of the common good. That's democracy and that doesn't belong to any party, right? That belongs to all of us. That's popular sovereignty, government for the people, by the people. 

So when you talk about scientific literacy, I kind of give it a street level definition of you know, it's applying the best information from scientific consensus, and I'll give you sort of a definition of that in a moment. But it's applying the best information we have at our disposal in that moment to decisions that are impacting both the present and the future. So when we talk about scientific literacy, I kind of want to broaden it to civic literacy, because it also means our reading of history, right? There is consensus on history. There are historians who there is maybe a debate around this. So I don't want to over-generalize, but like scientific discovery, there is historical, you know, traditions and rules and ways of understanding history and interpreting it. It's not just stories from the past, right? And so there's consensus on things that have happened that help educate us in the moments where we're making decisions, right? 

There's mathematical literacy, understanding the numbers of things. It's part of scientific literacy, right? And so in the COVID-19 moment, we were learning a lot from scientific consensus, right? And what I'll say about it's that the scientific method is really important, things like peer review among scientists, right? We're always developing a hypothesis and testing that hypothesis, right? And running experiments and doing research. And sometimes that hypothesis might be, I'll get a little bit political about it, but it was a scientific discussion, are these vaccines working, right? And so, you know, the scientific consensus was, these are really important to public health. And what I mean by scientific consensus is that scientists around the world en masse were running experiments and producing results that are replicable, experiments that can be saying, Hey, we're all coming up with similar enough results to say with some scientific authority that here is our best recommendation with what we have at our disposal right now through the scientific method. So there is we can say scientific consensus, right? 

Earlier, I talked about the importance of nutrition to learning little less political of a discussion, right? So we'll pause for a second there and say pediatricians, you know human development scientists, you know brain scientists, like all of them, have run experiments on the importance of nutrition to you know, to our learning as human beings, in consensus falling on you need to have a strong, balanced diet, like a healthy diet, to be a good learner. Okay, good. So now we're going to make decisions based on that knowledge base. That's what I call scientific literacy. We have access to that information, that research and that research is informing when we deliberate to make a decision like, Hey, this is important. How are we going to value it in our schools and in our communities and provide it if possible, right? So we listen to scientific knowledge base to make those decisions. 

If we don't learn to read research to value it, then we can fall victim to what I call the false equivalency. And the false equivalency needs to exist, because the only way we can trust science is by having a hypothesis. Say, maybe that, hey, maybe nutrition isn't important to learning. Let's run some tests. Let's see. We have scientists doing that kind of research, and you know what we're finding is that they prove the hypothesis, the null hypothesis, and that means that their hypothesis that maybe nutrition isn't important, fails, right? And so we need to propose those studies. We need to have studies that say, Hey, let's question is climate change due, you know, primarily to humans and how we're organizing and you know, our dependencies on fossil fuels or whatever we got to test that out. But by and large, scientific consensus, as when you run these experiments all over the world, or you do this research, what in general, or in mass or in significant, you know, numbers are we learning? And that's where we learn like say, hey, climate change is very real. We need to do some things differently for future generations. 

Okay, now let's move from there. But what happens often is we mix up things and we give equal time or equal value to the false equivalency, right? And that's when we get into these kind of debates like we saw in real time during COVID-19, right? Should we or shouldn't we vaccinate? Well, scientific consensus around the world was saying, hey, it's really important that we do this for public health and for safety and for our future.

The fact that there were also research being done to test that hypothesis is important, but then we, the people, you know, with, I'll say kind of a lack of value for scientific literacy or a misunderstanding, because we like things to be like our news to be fair and bias, okay, but let's be careful of not giving equal time or value to the false equivalency we need. 

The false equivalency in history, it's been huge because it's helped us, you know, disprove things like, is there such thing as a superior kind of human being, right? So we have, like racism used to have scientific evidence attached to it, but the scientific community, through the Human Genome Project and a lot of other really important work, said, Hey, what if you know we were actually equal? Right? Let's test it. And by and large, looking at DNA and all kinds of things, the Human Genome Project said, Hey, science historically got this wrong. Yes, so it's important to have those experiments, but we got to be really careful about that. 

And when I talk about scientific literacy, it's understanding that, on the street level, it's where do we go for trustworthy information? How do we value scientific method and scientific research out there leave room for it to be really broad, to ask all kinds of questions, but for our general public to pay close attention to scientific consensus, and that's sort of like, what are most, if not nearly all, the scientists who are experts in that community saying about something. And when I say scientists, I mean broadly, it's historians, right? It's experts in their area. They have, you know, training on best practices for doing surgeries, right, training on best practices for you know, organizing safety laws in our community, around traffic control and these kinds of things. 

My hope and desire and a strong democracy is that people deliberate on these issues with trustworthy, good information, and that no matter their backgrounds, right? They're able to come together and say, Okay, well, what does scientific consensus tell us now? How do we want to implement that? Because liberty is important in a democracy, so decentralized decision making our communities, having the right and responsibility to making local decisions is important, but if we don't have good education and we don't have strong, you know, habits of turning to scientific literacy and trustworthy information, then, as every listener out there knows, we're in an era where there is more than enough information out there. In fact, I talked about asynchronous becoming common vocabulary through COVID, so did misinformation. And so being able to have a literacy of, how do we ask, Where's this information come from, and can we trust it? So that's a big thing. And I turn to schools as places where us as teachers, we're responsible for teaching young people to not only know we're teaching from scientific consensus, but we're teaching them to navigate information and to make decisions in the interest of their communities and one another and ultimately themselves in that process. 

Larry Clark  32:39  

Yeah, I think our young learners, really, they got that in real time. Like you said, you know, this was all happening. It was happening fast. There was a lot of information coming along, and so our schools, I couldn't agree with you more. Our schools are so crucial. Our teachers are so crucial for helping build that ability to think critically, you know how to evaluate scientific information.

Johnny Lupinacci  33:07  

For us as teachers, how do we assess it? Right? And, and what we knew, but what we're seeing, hopefully continue to increase, is that we're applying scientific literacy and assessment to how we see if our learners are really learning something. It's like, we can list out how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you know, we can list the steps of it. We can require that you fill out this worksheet, or that, you know, online, in a discussion board, you write the steps of how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But can you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Um, do you have access to the materials necessary to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Why might we need peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Right? Okay, so there's these real like you're saying, these real examples that in that moment, a lot of teachers had to lean on more real examples, because children were at home, right? 

And it was uncovering, like I said, before we knew there were, you know, gaps and access to food, access to, you know, Internet access to, you know, safe learning spaces. When I say like we assume, because we have a classroom that's a safe place for kids, and it ought to be, our schools work really hard to provide that. We gotta have a whole separate podcast on can our legislators around the country help out that a little bit more? As we know, schools aren't places by and large, teachers and kids feel very safe going to all the time, but they ought to be, so let's assume they are. But is everybody's home safe for our learners? And so, you know, a lot of real, lived experiences became discussions became connected to learning. And we know this, but we were seeing it, and we were reminded of. It that real life project learning, right, is more successful than just sometimes the book activities or just the worksheets and so, you know, great teachers out there know this because they're doing it all the time in their classrooms, but more and more families learned about the importance of that as well.

Larry Clark  35:22  

Yes, definitely some of those lessons around, you know, home environment and safety. One thing I did want to ask you about, yeah, you know, that has been brought up multiple times after the pandemic, was this idea of learning loss. You know, kids basically fell off of a cliff, educationally, and that we're trying to climb our way back up to a level of education. Can you speak a little bit about learning loss? What that means? How much was it really a thing after the pandemic?

Johnny Lupinacci  35:57  

Yeah, well, there's a couple of ways that I like to discuss this, Larry. One of them is, yeah, it's a common phrase, learning loss. And, you know, all words illuminate some things and they hide other things. By and large, when we talk about learning loss, or when we read about it, because it seems like a day doesn't pass for the last five years that an education-related headline doesn't somewhere, at least in the headline or in the article, you know, talk about learning loss and most of those, most of that discussion points the finger at students, at families and teachers. It sort of, in a sense, blames them for the fact that, hey, everything stopped. Okay, learning didn't stop. But formally, you know, math lessons for that day or that week probably didn't all happen. And in fact, we know they didn't, and that's often what we focus on when we talk about learning loss, what didn't happen? 

And I say all words illuminate some things and they hide other things. So what wasn't, what doesn't come to light when we talk about learning losses, what were we also learning in that moment? Because you and I have already had a, you know, pretty rich discussion that we could have taken in any direction deeper about all the things we were learning during this era that we're too often I'll say talking about as learning loss. 

So I talked about standardized tests, and they measure kind of where our students are at, and they're not the best tool for measuring that, by and large, but they're a tool, right? And they give us some good data on like primarily, if we look as a nation, we pay extra close attention to fourth grade and eighth grade reading and math, and we have these sort of national report cards on things, so scores took a little bit of a dip. Well, when data changes, scientists are like researchers who interpret that data start to ask questions about why. And you know, it doesn't take a seasoned veteran in education research to know this, listener out there. You probably can apply common sense to this and say, well, the whole world stopped. So I'm not surprised that you know Timmy in third grade slowed down a little bit in his math lessons, right? But I want to say in that moment, Timmy was also learning some pretty important things that we don't quite know, the impact or the greatness of what that generation has endured or gained from that experience. 

Again, I don't want to romanticize a really tragic moment for the world, right? But, you know, learning kept going. It just maybe wasn't those items on the list that typically were hyper focused on, you know, at least as a nation, or at least in that standardized testing measurement of what kids are learning. So you know that conversation illuminates that. 

You know, things paused, and I hope listener, you know, when we're reading those things, we think about, okay, well, of course, it paused. So let's not blame these kids and say, Oh, we're doomed, yes, because, you know, we didn't learn everything we typically had been learning in third grade didn't learn get learned by third graders in 2020. Okay, let's take a deep breath and say, Well, what did they learn? Where might they relearn these things or reinforce that stuff? And how can we be sure to put responsibility on our school systems and our school structures and not just point the finger on these kids and dump more work on them now, because, you know, if I'm a kid and I'm like, Oh, great, right, they don't think I'm as smart as past generations now, because we experienced the pandemic, right? What were we going to do about that? So a lot of adjustments to be made, and a lot different ways to look at it. 

The other thing when we're talking about, you know, learning loss isn't just we talked about highlighting some of those really good things that occurred during that time, but we also got to look at, what are those numbers? Where'd they come from and I call this a sobering moment, or a moment of of being humble. Larry, these kids are scoring higher than you and I did when we were at their age. So they took a little dive in their scores. That's the truth, but they're kind of ahead. So I'm not saying it's okay that they didn't learn those things. I know most educators are working to refigure out how we can adjust and kind of, you know, make up for some of those missed lessons, right? Some of that lost stuff, but kids are highly resilient, and there's a lot of time between that COVID time and where we're at now and where they're going to pick up those things. 

And then a little reality check for all the folks writing those articles, even they scored lower, like Larry and I aren't just anomalies here, although I use us as test subjects. You know, they also scored lower, yes, and when they were that age. So are we in trouble? I don't think so. I can say with some some expertise and authority, no, are things different? Are they happening at a different pace? Yeah, but everything in the world stopped in that moment. 

The other thing that gets hidden behind it because I said, you know, words illuminate certain things and hide other things. And that phrase “learning loss,” right? It does illuminate that change in test score that I already told you I'm not very worried about, that's not saying I'm ignoring it, and, yeah, they didn't learn it. They never need to. But there's a lot of other places to kind of plug in those lessons or reinforce them, or re-teach it. But also we are, we were going through COVID, and we continued in this moment around the world, the largest social uprising of all of our lifetimes. And kids know about this. They're learning about it online. They're learning about it through the news, through the things they're interested in, their pop culture, right? And so we learned a lot about one another and ourselves and how we treat each other and ourselves in our communities. During COVID-19, you know, we saw the advent and the kind of rise of Black Lives Matter for those alive, for both the, you know, Civil Right, the beginnings of the civil rights movement, and this, I mean, they resonate with each other. This is a big moment for how we organize as a society, for how we treat one another. And so kids were learning a lot. They might know more than some of us do about, you know, racism, about sexism, you know, about a more just world, about climate change, about the kind of world they want their futures to be. So I get excited about that. 

So that moment too, when we say learning loss, it kind of discredits that all these young people were learning and they were having conversations, and they were applying skills, and they were learning history, you know, and they were asking questions about why is this, you know, murder of George Floyd creating such uprising. They're asking these questions, and they were going to get information on it. And you know, they were asking their teachers these questions. They were having these discussions in homes and communities. All of our workplaces were discussing, Hey, how are we paying attention to the world right now? So while it was a moment of, you know, we can get really technical about the standard items. You know, whether you know, Timmy learned what an adjective was and where it belongs in a sentence. Um, maybe they didn't learn it that day, but they were learning other things that arguably are going to be really important as we move forward as a country and a world.

Larry Clark  44:39  

Yeah, that's a really fascinating take on learning loss. I like how you describe it, you know that it's not just one thing. You know, it's not reading and writing only. It's a broader education. And just returning back to a couple of things that that you were talking about, you know, that we carried on. And in the five years since that pandemic first started, one has to do with, you know, this idea of schools and equity, and I'm wondering what you think about kind of the differences between schools, between communities, and whether, you know, since the pandemic, that's gotten a little more even? And it could be everything from the digital divide you mentioned. You know, a lot of kids were getting computers for the first time. And as a nation, as a world, probably, we really started getting those tools that are so necessary for kids in their hands. Do you think that has continued? Do you think we're in a position where some of those lessons that we learned around building equity between different schools, different communities, has carried on?

Johnny Lupinacci  45:50  

Yes, my simple answer is yes. Most schools and districts, and you know, and I would say, around the world, have acknowledged that, you know, a one-to-one program, which is like in this digital time we're in, like a computer that everyone has access to, or some kind of, you know, technological device that mediates learning. Not instead of a teacher, right, but together with the teacher that they have a classroom because social learning is real, or they have a community of learners that come together, but that technology plays a part of that in this moment of time that we're in and the future that they're going into, all of their workplaces will require, like you said, a technological or digital literacy. They're going to have to be skilled in how AI is used in their careers and how, you know, online conference discussions happen. What are the ways that we listen to one another through technology? 

It's very different for, say, us there, because we've experienced no technology in communications and then all this technology over the past, you know, 20-30 years. And for our young learners, and they're the future adults in our community, they, by and large, learn and communicate and apply on a day-to-day basis through technology. So, I think again, there was a big divide and not maybe enough attention to funding those kinds of initiatives, pre-COVID, and then COVID really exposed that. And I would say, you know, we've learned that those are priorities. And I say, Yes, they'll continue. That's my optimism, you know, trying to be really, really, you know, active voice about it, because I hope they continue, because they're really important. I can't see communities deciding, you know, to continue to be inequitable in those ways. 

But that's also discussion that's going on between our rural schools, our suburban schools, and our urban districts, and even within those districts, the different schools you know, which have access to reliable or updated technology you know, who's funded, who has a, back to the simple thing of food, who has access to healthy nutrition to be good learners? We have inequity in our education system, and education is the bedrock of democracy. So if we have an inequality in our education system, we multiply that when we talk about democracy and community, we have inequality in our community. So if we're looking to be a strong democracy and have more equality right amongst us. We can't do it without our schools being places that are not only equitably funded, but have a good understanding of what that means, right, who benefits and who suffers in our schools. And so I think we did learn that there's more we can do, and I think we're doing that where we can, but it's a big project. I'm going to hope it continues, because it's important one.

Larry Clark  49:09  

That relates to a lot of what I think about education, too. You know that within our society, within our democracy, that it's the great leveler, you know. It's the chance, you know that we all believe in to make a better life, to rise up and, you know, achieve our dreams. And you know, maybe that's a little optimistic too, but you know that has to start with schools having equal access, not just to technology and food, but, you know, education. And so just in general, you know, I think the pandemic really brought that to light. You know, for me, personally, and for a lot of us who look to the schools to be that equalizer within our society.

Johnny Lupinacci  49:57  

Yeah, absolutely, we're human communities, and we have really different interests, and, you know, different cultures. But by and large, if we're to look at ourselves as humans, you know, we get in community together, and in our country, historically, and I think, now and even moving into the future, it's well known that our public schools are part of that unifying community aspect of our everyday life. 

We talked about it a little early in this podcast, but you know, things we call extracurriculars are actually essentials, not just to making for a well-rounded education, but for community unity, right, whether it's Friday night football right in our rural communities, we know that's big across our country. Yes, it is right, and it's not just big because it's an opportunity for our kids to, you know, follow their dream to become professional football players. That's part of it. But what we know, by and large, and everyone participating in all those things, know that 99.999% of all the participants in those so called extracurriculars, I call them essentials, right, are participating in that as they're learning to be in community with others. They're learning to work together. They're learning to enjoy and have well-rounded education, a complement to the learning in their classroom, whether it's choir, you know whether it's chess club, you know whether it's debate team, all of these parts of our community, you know it. It provides this sort of scaffolding for the young people to become the adults. 

And we did learn, and all the diverse communities that we live in, we work in, and that we, you know, seek enjoyment, that our public schools play a key part in that. When they're underfunded or they're cut and those things go away, things become less human, less community, right? Whether we're talking about, you know, learning to grow food together, whether we look at like our 4-H clubs and different organizations that play such a key role in how we build community, how we make friends, how we work together with others, right across political lines, across different identities, these are things that human communities come together around and our stalwart of democracy and part of being a patriot of this country, right? And that's for everybody, not just if you're out there thinking like, oh, patriot, he means conservative or he's liberal, it's like, get rid of some of those identities. Those are important beliefs that we carry into it, but we have a common ground in this country, and boy, did we all learn it during COVID. Yes, man, it was hard when there wasn't a choir concert. It was hard when we didn't have things like graduations, right? But we also adapted, and we came together and we supported one another. 

And again, I don't like to focus on tragedy as learning points, right? But we see it now even with, say, like the fires in Southern California or the floods from the hurricanes, you know, in the southeast, you see communities come together. That's right, human beings, we are really good at taking care of one another, and we learn to do that in schools, right? And being and not just in our classrooms through the traditional lessons that we're tested on, but in the activities, even things as small as like a bake sale, right? It's us coming together with young people in our community to kind of scaffold and show them, hey, this is what it's like to be in a democracy. This is what it like. It's like to provide a service to your community. This is what it's like to be proud of the city or the county or the place you're in. And no matter how difficult that place might be, right? We can always make it better, right? 

And so those are some of the ways where I, I think Larry, that, you know, I hope to see those things continue, because sometimes they were being cut without that discussion of what they brought to our communities. And we're seeing it even in this last election, that by and large across the country, despite political identities, people in mass support public schools, and that's because we all realized that this is part of our economy. This is not just part of like moving on to go to college, to be in a career, but it's part of how we also participate and enjoy things in our community. It brings a dimension of life to all of our communities. If we take that aspect out of it, you know, the learning is less interesting. It's not as well rounded, and then we don't have much connection between I'll just make the separation the adults in our community and the young people. But. So where are those spaces we come together? It's those public school related events.

Larry Clark  55:05  

I think you hit, you know, something that's very important. I really appreciate it. Before we conclude, you know, is there anything else that we learned from the pandemic that we haven't talked about?

Johnny Lupinacci  55:20  

I think we touched on the big things, Larry, but, you know, I'll wrap up saying, I think the most important lesson of all of it as that we learned that we can come together to make a difference, and that, you know, there's no better time than right now to do that. We're in a bit of a Dickens moment. You know, we could look at things and say, Man, this is the worst it's ever been, but at the same time, it's also the best it's ever been. How do we navigate that together? How do we make our way through this mess and come out, you know, even better, even stronger together. And I see that happening, so I'm energized all the time. Again I hate that it's connected to struggle and suffering and loss. So I don't want my words, all words illuminate some things and hide others. I don't want to trivialize the loss. So another piece to think about is like we're still in that moment. We're still making sense, right? Grief takes time, right? And as a nation and as a world, we're grieving a big loss, and change is not easy, right? And we are in a big moment of change, so we're grieving. Things are changing, right? And we're learning a lot about ourselves and one another. That's never easy. 

So the other thing I say is, remember we're still in that moment. We're still making sense of it. So in in some sense, go slow, be patient, have humility and find humanity in one another, because that's where we're ultimately going to end up. How do we take care of ourselves and one another in the best way we know to.

Larry Clark  57:13  

Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. So great talking with you today.

Johnny Lupinacci  57:16  

Great talking with you too. Larry,

Larry Clark  57:20  

Thanks for listening. You can read more about education after the pandemic, find other podcast episodes and a lot more at magazine.wsu.edu. 

You can follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and please give us a good rating if you like the podcast. 

This episode was produced by me, Larry Clark. 

Our music is by a WSU emeritus music professor and composer Greg Yasinitsky.