Thoughts from the Editors

Three years into a world with Covid, the GATEways’ inbox continues to fill with submissions that reflect an undeniable truth: the effects of this virus continue to be reckoned with in education. Putting the Spring issue together, we deliberated on whether readers would find interest in yet another article on teaching during Covid, becoming a teacher during Covid, education gaps left by Covid, etc.. Our concern appeared to be premature and on reflection we realized very little has had such a sweeping effect on education in our lifetimes as Covid, and that our reflections, our research, and our reassessment of best practices in teacher education and student achievement are needed now more than ever.

In our Thoughts from the Editors this issue, Dr. Jennifer Curl, an English teacher with Henry County Schools, offers reflections from the PK-12 perspective, and Dr. LaTashaAdams, a teacher educator with Clayton State University, presents thoughts from the field of higher education.

PK-12 Reflection

My twenty-five-year-old son began his first year of teaching in August 2022. Though Covid arrived during his undergraduate studies, he started his practicum in the Fall of 2021 and received an in-person experience with his mentor teachers and their students. While his practicum was not impeded by Covid, now, as an elementary music teacher, he witnesses the effect the pandemic left on his young students. Many children now in the second and third grade, received their introduction to formal education in front of a computer screen. The experiences of personal interaction, engagement with teachers and classmates, and the liberty of recess, were placed on hold, to be received much later than earlier generations.As a consequence, first year teachers like my son, and veteran teachers alike, are working through, around, and trying to fill those notorious gaps in their students’education.

As Dr. Adams reflects in her Higher Education section, we cannot go back. Educators at all levels of teaching entered uncharted territory in the Spring of 2020 when Covid closed schools across the country. We responded with the tools we had and the best practices we relied on for decades. Now, as teacher educators, teacher leaders, and administrators, it is time to reassess. The articles in this issue illustrate just a few ways in which Covid has altered the landscape in education. Recently, a colleague told me of watching another teacher’s observation by her university supervisor. My colleague shared with me the frustration she felt as the university professor delivered recommendations to the young teacher. Her frustration derived from the professor’s suggestions that reflected a clear lack of understanding of the gaps postCovid students possess and the adjustments the classroom teachers have made to meet students’needs Well-intended as they were, the feedback the professor gave her student were stock best practices that were not appropriate for the students in this particular classroom. Her feedback illustrated the disconnect that often exists between teacher education programs and the realities that new teachers are facing. While this is not a new problem, this anecdote underpins the understanding we came to as editors putting the Spring issue together: As eager as we are to put Covid behind us, we are only scratching the surface with its impact on teaching.