lost generation – HonorsGradU

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, schools shut down and children started learning from home. Everyone was very focused on making sure kids had the proper technology for at-home learning, and rightfully so. Teachers also worked overtime to set up bags of additional resources such as pencils, notebooks, and more.

But in some homes, especially those of lower-income, there were additional missing resources. Books.

Reading, and the love of reading is so important for children! But one teacher in Nampa, Idaho was set out to change that. She teaches in a low-income school where her students don’t have as much access to literature and were learning from home. So she reached out to family and friends asking for them to become “book buddies” with the 25+ students in her class.

All she asked was for them to send one book a month to the student they were paired with. I had the wonderful opportunity to become one of the book sponsors for this program. I’ve been able to send one book a month to my little friend in second grade. He even drew me a little picture and thank you note back!

I was so impressed with Rachel because she had the books delivered to her house for these students and personally drives around town to deliver each one to their homes.

It’s incredible to see the ingenuity, sacrifice, time, and love these teachers have for their students. What other incredible things have you seen teachers do for their students during the pandemic?

There’s a lot of buzz going around our communities about the “lost generation” of students. Everyone talks about this group of students currently in school, whether that be elementary school, high school, college, or graduate school students as if they are getting lesser of an education.

The stance is that since learning is taking place over video calls, sometimes half in-person and half virtual. Each day protocol is changing and sometimes students don’t even know if they are supposed to be physically in their school or if they need to open up their laptop and log into online learning for the day. Because of this, they aren’t gaining the knowledge and education that everyone else has been offered up until this point, therefore, we will have a generation of incompetent beings running our world.

But what if they aren’t the lost generation? What if these students are exactly what our future needs?

Adaptable.

Able to work well with technology.

Figuring out how to learn virtually when they do better in-person.

Personal skills to work with new teachers as needed.

Ability to use multiple platforms of learning for multiple subjects in school.

Our society is correct, these students aren’t obtaining the same education we did, but I would argue that they are receiving a better education. They are put through more changes and learning platforms than we could ever imagine as students.

Teaching and learning during a pandemic are hard, it’s a level of hard that no one can understand unless they are there in the moment doing it. But our teachers and students are working harder than ever to continue on the education system, and they should be commended for that!

Let’s stop calling them the lost generation and start recognizing that they may just be the generation our world needs someday.

Tag: lost generation

A Book For My Book Buddy

Are Our Students Really The Lost Generation?