Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

#26 of 60: What have we learned from schooling during the pandemic, and how can we use those learnings to design better for the future? 🤔

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Peter Gray, psychology researcher and scholar, has published a thought-provoking piece in Psychology Today: A Pandemic Lesson: Family Togetherness Makes Children Happy.

He reviews some recent research from Let Grow and the Institute for Family Studies. And here is his suggestion:

“So here is a lesson from the pandemic that I hope will stick: Prior to the pandemic, children and teens were kept so busy with school, schoolwork, and extracurricular activities, and parents were so busy with their own work and with carting their kids from one activity to another, that kids and parents had little opportunity to really get to know one another. They were so busy achieving, in the narrow ways we have defined achievement, that they had little chance just to be, just to get to know one another for who they are rather than what they are doing. But then parents began to see their kids through new eyes, and, for the most part they liked what they saw; and children began to see that their parents really cared for them—as people, not as grades on a report card.”

Is there anything here relevant to our discussions of human-centered transformation? Quite possibly.

Has the pandemic challenged us to stop and think about…

  • How we frame “success” (for ourselves as adults and our children)?
  • How we frame the idea of “relationships,” not only with our own children but with others?
  • How agency has shifted away from institutions and into the hands of families and learners and what that change in structure means for our behavior?
  • What structure and mindset changes are within our control to realize a more human-centered world, inside and outside the family unit and school environment?

I do wonder if kids with less-involved parents would agree with Gray’s assertion.

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âť“ Provocations:

How does Gray’s assertion about family dynamics prompt you to think differently? Are there any places where you see his thinking falling short?

đź’Ž Resource:

Armchair Expert Podcast with Lenore Skenazy, co-founder and president of Let Grow

🧠 Mindsets:

Relationships

Success

đź’ˇ Area:

Learning

📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. 🔥🔥🔥

Randy Ziegenfuss
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