EdSurge’s Year in Review: The Top 10 K-12 Stories of 2021

As one other pandemic yr attracts to an in depth, a couple of key themes have risen to the highest in training. First amongst them is how tough the job has grow to be.

Stories about burnout, poisonous positivity and placing respect again in the educating career had been all exceedingly well-liked. Also: Our continued protection of the collapse of China’s on-line tutoring market, and its world ramifications, grew to become required studying for anybody in training.

And there have been loads of outliers, too, together with an interesting take a look at what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos actually desires from training, and the educators taking intention at Teachers Pay Teachers. Read on for the total listing of the tales hottest with readers in 2021.

Amazon’s efforts to develop its footprint in K-12 training via digital instruments have largely fizzled. But Jeff Bezos is thought for taking part in the lengthy sport, and public training may be very a lot half of it, opines Dominik Dresel, a faculty administrator and edtech entrepreneur. “I do not think public education leaders will have much of a choice in whether or not to answer when Amazon comes to knock and deliver,” he writes.

Early final yr, China abruptly pulled the plug on the multi-billion greenback on-line tutoring business, which employed American educators educating Chinese college students. Now, 1000’s of lecturers are scrambling to determine what occurs subsequent. Some will maintain tutoring, even when they’re pushed underground or are pressured to take decrease charges. Others are making the tough option to stroll away.

Braced for the subsequent wave of edtech? It will probably be massive. As in world, company massive, fueled by massive gamers in China and India. Combine that with some of the dislocations triggered by COVID and college students may very well be in for some radical adjustments in the instruments that assist them study.

It seems an excessive amount of cheerfulness generally is a dangerous factor—particularly when it’s used to disregard authentic considerations or masks disagreeable truths. The phenomenon is called “toxic positivity,” and psychologists say it may be dangerous to our well being. Here’s the way it impacts and demoralizes educators—and the way they will push again.

The well-liked lesson planning website Teachers Pay Teachers has lengthy struggled with allegations of plagiarism, racist lesson plans and poor content material high quality—drawing the ire of lecturers and social media customers. In response, the positioning rolled out new social justice initiatives and extra responsive content material moderation. But for some, the scenario remains to be fraught.

Dena Simmons, a outstanding researcher of social-emotional studying, resigned from Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence final January resulting from what she known as a sample of habits by some colleagues that left her feeling “tokenized, undermined and bullied.” She began a brand new group known as LiberatED that goals to place racial justice on the heart of its SEL work.

“We must stop expecting educators to save themselves and instead start to address the group climate and culture of our schools,” writes faculty management knowledgeable Sean Slade. That means requires lecturers to follow self-care are usually not sufficient. But there are efficient methods for making change, enhancing morale and getting buy-in from employees.

In 2020, the College Board introduced adjustments to its AP testing program. Early in the pandemic, the testmaker had already redesigned its decades-old format to accommodate emergency distant studying and unfinished curricula. In its newest replace, AP exams will try and “meet students where they are,” whether or not that be in faculty or at house, on paper or on-line.

“As an instructional coach, the most important role I have is as a listener,” writes Jennifer Yoo-Brannon. Lately, she’s heard how lecturers are annoyed, demoralized and drained of poisonous positivity. Her options embody actual listening, actual change and studying to acknowledge each other’s humanity. “There are so many dehumanizing workplaces,” she provides. “We cannot let schools be those spaces.”

The finish of China’s on-line tutoring ecosystem—which at one level employed round 100,000 North American educators—got here as a shock to everybody, and lots of of 1000’s of tutors, dad and mom and business watchers adopted our sequence chronicling its demise and aftermath. In this, our hottest piece of the yr, reporter Emily Tate autopsies a booming business that had discovered disfavor with China’s authorities, and shares wrenching tales from tutors on the frontlines, reduce off from a badly wanted supply of earnings but additionally the scholars that they had grown connected to.