My pitch was simple. The pandemic might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform schools (he agreed). Parents are seeing first-hand some of the significantly flawed structures and elements of schools that need changing (he really agreed as a parent). Redesigning during a crisis would be extraordinarily challenging and we should try to make it as easy as possible (he was in). As a first step, we decided to create the podcast Class Disrupted to surface real questions from families stemming from the pandemic chaos, ask “experts” to illuminate design principles and design advice, and then engage in real talk about what is required for schools to change.
Michael then took this joint project a step further. In this book he captures the best of those discussions and our dialogue over the past two years and combines them with additional research and insights. He has the incredible ability to take nuanced ideas and make them clear and, most importantly, implementable. His curiosity leads him to pursue understanding to a depth that is imperative for those of us who are doing the work. Over a decade ago, the book he coauthored with Clay Christensen, Disrupting Class, played a profound role in how we at Summit thought about redesigning our school model.
Leading and operating schools during these pandemic years is by far the most demanding and least rewarding experience I've had in my 25 years as an educator. On many days, simply keeping schools open takes every minute and all of the energy. Finding the mental space to step back and up to seize this moment, which is begging us to change, most often feels untenable, and yet imperative. It is my hope that this new book is as faithful and helpful a companion to educators, parents, and policymakers alike as Michael's previous works and weekly conversations have been for me.
Diane Tavenner
Cofounder and CEO of Summit Public Schools
Cohost of the podcast Class Disrupted
Author of Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life
The Story of Jeremy and Julia
Jeremy and Julia are two of the 600 students at Spruce Park Elementary School in California.
As the bus rolled in to the school parking lot at 8:30 a.m., Jeremy trudged down the stairs and outside. He yawned.
After pausing for a moment, he noticed his fellow fifth-grade classmate Julia and a couple of her friends skipping up the hill to school. Walkers, he thought. A moment of envy flashed through his mind and then passed. He waved to Julia, who smiled and waved back.
Then his stomach grumbled. He turned to walk toward the school cafeteria to grab a quick bite before the bell rang. His mom had been so tired from working the late shift at the convenience store that she hadn't had time to scrounge some breakfast together. Again.
Jeremy couldn't sort through what was worse: when his mom was laid off when the pandemic started and she moped around the house all day while he was stuck inside away from his friends, school, and reliable food, or now when she had finally decided to work again and barely saw him—but at least he could see his friends at school and eat the cafeteria food. Maybe his teacher, Mrs. Alvarez, would ask him to write about it again. He sighed.
While Jeremy scarfed down food in the cafeteria, Julia happily skipped rope with her friends as they waited for the bell to ring. She loved these precious moments with her friends before they were told to sit silently during class and before the cascade of after-school activities that greeted her each day after dismissal. She loved gymnastics, piano, soccer, and robotics, but she sometimes longed for parts of the early days of the pandemic when the whole neighborhood was outside playing games of socially distant hopscotch under the California sun.
The principal, Dr. Kathleen Ball, watched all the students arrive—bussers and walkers alike. Her gaze was pleasant as she greeted each child by name. But her mind was elsewhere, as she wondered what was worse—the chaos and confusion of the early days of the pandemic or the tormented and unsettled nature of the current school year with so many students having so many different needs and so many parents frustrated that their child's needs still weren't being met.
Things were hard at the outset of COVID—so many decisions to make, so much uncertainty, so little time.
Ball had been so proud of how her teachers banded together and came up with creative solutions. They weren't perfect. But what they put together and the speed with which they did so was better than the alternative.
The parents were so kind, understanding, and appreciative back then. They understood the stress under which she and all her teachers were operating—even as they dealt with so much at home as well.
Things were different now. Different pockets of parents had different priorities and opinions. On everything.
That had always been true, of course. But now there was less trust. Needs had gone unmet and become more severe. Parents held higher expectations that these needs would be—no, should be—met. Many displayed a lack of common courtesy.
Now in the fourth school year impacted by the pandemic, her teachers and team just didn't have the same reserves to deal with the heightened expectations. They were all just exhausted—physically and mentally. They were overworked, and the school still struggled with staffing shortages.
Why couldn't parent emotions be focused on something else other than being angry at teachers, Ball wondered. If she were principal of a high school, maybe she could have at least rallied parent emotions around something else, like the opposing players on other schools' sports teams. She knew that sounded better only in theory compared to her current day-to-day reality.
Introduction
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic shattering the routines and lives of students, parents, and educators, schools have been through so much.
In the Boston Globe, Sarah Carr told the story of 10-year-old “Daniel”—his middle name to protect his identity. A struggling reader who is dyslexic, Daniel had finally gotten the support he needed from his school district after six years of effort by his parents.
Yet when schools shut down in March 2020, the support stopped—the tutoring, small-group classes, and specific teaching interventions.
Daniel's heartbreaking story was far from unusual, as COVID-19 interrupted schools' operations across the world.
But schools were struggling before the pandemic as well.
Most of these challenges weren't of any one person's making, nor were they the fault of the people who work in schools today. Many of the challenges were the result of structures and processes that were designed long ago for a different age. These structures have become stuck in our world as “the grammar of schooling” or “just the way school is.”
That students start kindergarten fascinated by schooling and end up bored isn't a coincidence. It's the logical outgrowth of how our schools are built. For decades, it was a successful design.
But in today's knowledge economy that prizes intellectual capital—where we need all individuals to build passions and develop their full human potential—it no longer suffices.
Amid the disaster since the pandemic's assault on society and schools over multiple school years, there is opportunity to rebuild better by altering the fundamental assumptions undergirding our present-day schooling model.
Despite my background, this isn't a book about disruptive innovation.
Nor is it a book about the devastation and disruption that the pandemic caused.
It's about what we build out of this devastation. What we choose to create.
It starts with educators.
Although there are many