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I also enjoyed reading this speech!
At my school, we had 5 weeks of online learning where only children of essential workers attended school. The following 5 weeks of school were a slow return to “normal”. Staff ‘water-cooler’ conversations over the last 5 weeks have been focused around how can we keep the best things about online learning and not just revert back to the way things were.
We teach in innovative learning environments and one thing we have often discussed is that we are attempting to educate students for the 21st century using mostly methods and facilities that have been around for decades. Is this global pandemic a catalyst for change?
As schools/school districts realise the need to teach sustainability and to embed it into their curriculum this will support ambitions to reach towards the SDGs. Bringing this back to my school context, if I went to school after the mid year break and said “Let’s embed sustainability curriculum into our units!” I would not be very popular. The main objection I would get is that the curriculum is overcrowded, already we don’t have enough minutes in the day to get through what we have to get through, etc, etc.
At present, education both supports and challenges efforts to reach SDGs. My hope is that some things (not everything) can change after living through this pandemic. I would hate to see things return to pre-Covid19! If this pandemic is not a catalyst for change, I don’t know what will be!
