ABClatino Magazine Year 7 Issue 9

Happy New Year! For schools in the New York State and the northeast region of the United States, September is the start of the new school year and the start of new beginnings for educators, students, and their families. This year in particular feels like something new, now with the pandemic officially behind us and the trauma we felt from remote learning and high rates of absenteeism of both children and staff triaged. Right now, schools are working to retain their teachers, and motivate, even incentivize, their students to show up every day for learning. And that learning is looking more and more different with changes that include new awareness of issues that have played themselves out in the background for decades, now coming to the forefront. Namely, multiculturalism as a strength, women as school leaders, and AI as an inescapable reality with use of internet technologies as learning tools.

So much has changed for us over the last one hundred years with respect to many aspects that deeply affect our daily lives with respect to transportation, from horses to electric cars; communication, from the telegraph to smart phones; and music and dance, from the waltz to hip hop. The format for instruction and learning has remain primarily the same. Proposed reforms continue to offer remedies to an existing system that upholds the same philosophy of education: children must be put into same-age groups and be lectured to by an “expert,” the teacher. Meanwhile, recent research has shown that students in the United States, especially Latinos, feel disconnected from their school. What kind of new year do we want for our children? What can we do differently?

What Can Educators and Communities

Do Differently to Innovate Education?

Diane M.

Nickerson

MS Ed.

ABClatino Magazine Year 7 Issue 9 | Page 19