Recently this topic has been surfacing in a lot of different ways. When you read the headlines and learn that more than ever there is high absenteeism rate in schools or post pandemic there has been a decline in literacy and numeracy achievement levels, we as a society are beginning to feel a bit lost with what to do. Millions of dollars in the US, UK and elsewhere have gone into research looking for the solutions to improve these statistics. Social emotional learning programs have been introduced to help with mental health across the campuses and lots of professional development time has been afforded to improving reading.
Yet with all this effort the impact and improvement has not taken hold and in some cases students are putting their foot down saying enough. Either they are refusing to go to school or parents are tired of the arguments and accepting that time off might be a good thing. We worry that complacency is beginning to settle in to this generation which is why we have created CTL Academy Global and partner with many outstanding organizations that approach these challenges differently.
We acknowledge that this generation of learners has had a tough go with the rise of school violence, increase in poverty levels, school closures for long periods due to the pandemic and of course the experience with climate change that they have inherited. Similar to the grieving process once we acknowledge the pain and survive it the next step is to live and connect more deeply with others and what concerns us and then we can thrive. At CTL Academy we have begun to embrace the notion that to thrive we need to work with our students to actively help them develop their own sense of urgency. This is not an easy task but Dr. Mara Simmons in her blog has captured some specific steps we are taking to make it happen with our learners.
We invite you to have a read through and share your thoughts with respects to your children’s own status in this journey or cycle. Do they have agency and care for their world? their community? How is this evidenced? Alternatively are your children surviving and living through their educational journey- doing tasks assigned and following the pack because they believe that is what they are supposed to do? Or are their in a challenging space impacting their mental health or state of happiness counting the days to summer.
If this article resonates please do reach out and let’s see how we can support one another.
CTL Academy Global 