IN THIS ISSUE

Hello to our dear PEN community!

There was a time when this journal was called a “quarterly” journal. Many of you may already know that we are a volunteer board, and the PEN network does not have any full-time staff. And while we all love PEN, we all have full-time jobs that pull us in different directions. So when someone jokingly suggested renaming this as “peripatetically published,” we laughed and felt it gave us all a little flexibility. And then pandemic life lasted longer and has required us to be more flexible than we ever could have imagined.

We assembled this issue back in the beginning of summer 2020, with an eye towards publishing it in the fall as we all returned to school. What a complicated return this has been! Not only have we adapted to unprecedented public health protocols, but we’ve also been challenged to help our young people process a particularly challenging period for American democracy. We have seen continued anti-Black racism, and an intense rise in hate crimes towards Asian-Americans.

As educators, we have learned so many lessons in the last six months - hopefully the most important are about cherishing relationships, checking on each other often, checking on ourselves often, and finding ways to find joy and connection amidst the anxiety, frustration, and grief.

We deeply value maintaining this network and are grateful to have the opportunity to finally share these pieces with you. We hope you’ve already seen our board statement from last July on page 4, and we will be taking new actions this April based on your suggestions from our community conversations last August. You will read pieces sent by educators from the Wolcott School (Chicago), University of Chicago Laboratory School, Wickliffe Progressive School (Upper Arlington, OH), Depp Elementary (Dublin, OH), Britton-Norwich Learning Campus (Hilliard, OH), and Montana State University - all of whom are grappling with continuing to honor progressive teaching principles while navigating this new world of pandemic learning. We also share about a recently published book documenting some history of the progressive movement, which we are committed to continue to explore.

As we continue to look forward to a time where we achieve new milestones towards normalcy, we hope we can together think about how we want to reshape and reframe learning, using lessons we have learned from this time. We see opportunities to rebuild a better education landscape, but it will take thoughtful partnership and strategic action. We look forward to a slew of opportunities to connect online this spring, so we can continue to build this future as a vibrant network.

— Sunny Pai, on behalf of the PEN Board