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The Teachers.
Ms. Callo comes into her second-grade class with a bag of fresh washed and folded school uniforms. The student remarks how much fun it is to wear clean clothes.
Mr. Surcim sneaks a bagged lunch into the backpack of a very thin fourth grader. The student hasn’t a clue it was put in since he assumes his aunt packs his lunch each day.
Mr. Vititus surprises a few kids in art class with art supplies for the upcoming year knowing their parents do not have the money for them to be able to color. The teacher tells them it’s because they were selected as up and coming stars.
Mrs. Noswal gently combs out the hair of girls and boys who come to school with knotted locks. Scalps not purposely matted for style or cultural relevance. Upon completion, they feel as if they attended a spa.
EMPATH CALLO
However, sadly enough, the latest education chatter does not focus on why Teachers Callo, Surcim, Vititus and Noswal need to continue their roles as empaths, but rather the recent national test results showing in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren. The performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropped to the levels from two decades ago.
This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years.
The declines spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students. While top performers in the 90th percentile showed a modest drop — three points in math — students in the bottom 10th percentile dropped by 12 points in math, four times the impact.
EMPATH SURCIM
Just imagine the sheer shock and disappointment of not living up to the education standards of being the world’s richest country. Once again, other countries prioritizing education continue to build their foundation for cultural and economic bliss, which we clearly are being buried under.
So where do you think Teachers Callo, Surcim, Vitutus, Noswal place those test results in terms of their student priorities? Something tells me that clean clothes, lunch, art supplies, and combed hair comes out ahead.
However, this kind of crucial support for children is something that happens every day in schools. When the pandemic began in 2020 and schools shut down, children did not just miss out on academics. They missed out on essential care from trusted adults outside their homes. I’m not just talking about child care for working parents, though schools do provide that, to an extent (still, the American school day doesn’t mirror typical parents’ working hours).
EMPATH VITITUS
Schools serve a vital function in protecting our kids. This function is obscure to everyone who does not frequently interact with the public education system. But when schools closed for months, the empaths no longer had a window in their students’ lives.
When The New York Times polled more than 300 school counselors this past May, 88 percent of them said that students were having more trouble regulating their emotions than they did before the pandemic. This is a stark reminder for everyone that the classroom is a place for the development of people, and not just for the sharing of curriculum and testing.
EMPATH NOSWAL
Ideally, we would live in a country where kids had their basic needs met by their parents or their close communities, and schools did not have to play such a vital and expansive role in children’s emotional lives. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and the more places children can learn to be empathetic humans, the better.
When students see their teachers act with care and compassion, it’s the ultimate classroom lesson. And all the testing in the world will never reveal the real benefits of kids learning empathy as young as possible. Just ask Teachers Callo, Surcim, Vitutus and Noswal.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached by email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
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