A New Back-to-School Experience
- By Yvonne Marquez
- 07/01/20
As a nerdy kid, my absolute favorite part of the
year growing up was back-to-school season. I couldn’t wait to
receive my school supplies list and go shopping for new gel pens,
highlighters, and notebooks. I loved it more than Christmas! I
looked forward to meeting new teachers and new classmates and
getting to learn so many new things.
As the 2020-2021 academic year begins soon, students,
teachers, and staff alike are gearing up for an entirely new back-to-school experience. With coronavirus rates still increasing across
the United States, schools and universities are rethinking educational
environments in order to keep occupancy low and properly
social distance.
Some school districts will be implementing a hybrid learning
model where half of the student population attends in-person classes
on certain days of the week while the rest learn online and then
students switch. Some school districts will be taking an online-only
approach for a portion or all of the first semester, while others are
planning for a full return to the classroom with PPE in the fall.
This school year will require district leaders to be agile and
flexible and push themselves to problem solve like never before. In
this issue of Spaces4Learning, we have an insightful guide to rethinking
school spaces and structures to help with the process. On our
website under the “COVID-19” tab, you can find all our coverage of
the pandemic and its impact on schools, colleges and universities.
Online articles include how to incorporate signage for social distancing
purposes and how school nurses are critical to the pandemic.
Spaces4Learning will continue to cover how schools and colleges are
tackling the coronavirus, along with other design, planning and
management needs.
The weeks ahead will prove challenging but also provide a
chance to try something new, to rethink what we thought was working
and to forge a new plan for the sake of our school communities.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Spaces4Learning.
About the Author
Yvonne Marquez is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].