By Cierra Kaler-Jones

When the pandemic closed the doors of global studies teacher Gregory Landrigan’s middle school classroom at Sacred Heart School in D.C., he decided to shelve the lessons he’d planned for the rest of the year. “What do you want to learn?” he asked the students. “What matters to you most?” With the answers to these questions, he invited students to explore a topic of interest to them through an independent study.

Each student could pitch something and based on their interests, Landrigan placed them into groups. He highlighted the importance of this group work,

It’s creating a space for students to have access to one another. That’s been something important for me and my colleagues. School matters for so many reasons outside of just academia. Part of building a more just world is community-building.

After students were put into groups, they did a ‘data dump’ of information with their peers in a Google document, which consisted of articles, pictures, videos, and data points. Landrigan also did his own research and placed information in students’ documents to provide them with additional material they might find interesting and relevant to their topics. They discussed the topics to find the connections across experience, research, and tie historical accounts to present day events.

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Some students built on lessons they explored throughout the school year. For example, students identified areas of interest including African refugees traveling from Africa to Europe, student activism and an analysis of the 1968 walkouts in South Los Angeles, the roots of racism, and how the harmful rhetoric of the presidential administration around COVID-19 further perpetuates the long-standing history of xenophobia.

Some students were interested in doing a deep analysis of the moment -- diving into how COVID-19 has impacted certain communities, as well as how different media sources play a role in disseminating both information and misinformation about the global pandemic. Other ideas of exploration included examining education systems in different countries and the research behind distance learning to better understand some of their own experiences in relation to place and space. Using Project Zero’s thinking routines, Landrigan and his students engaged in activities like Color, Symbol, Image to artistically represent what they’d learned and process through a creative outlet.

Landrigan set up the independent study work like a writing workshop. Students created an online collaborative learning space, where they took their learnings and designed one week’s worth of activities for the rest of the class to do. Landrigan compiled students’ work to showcase the lessons, information, and analyses they shared. He met on Zoom with each group and the students planned out a week-long curriculum around the resources (i.e. videos, articles, graphs, and/or images) that they felt passionate about sharing. Together, they agreed on which collaborative online thinking routines would best communicate, share, and investigate the resources they selected. He posed these questions to his students to guide them,

What is it that you want your classmates to do with this information? How can we build these structures and put them on the internet?

Recognizing the importance of community and the stresses in students’ lives, this curriculum shift helped to create space for students to engage in a level of participation that worked for them. Landrigan noted that he would use Zoom less for academic purposes and more as an opportunity to spend time connecting to hear from students what they need in the moment. They had a minimum of one meet-up per week, which consisted of virtual gatherings where they might get together to have lunch and ask questions about the independent study work, wear their favorite costume or fun outfit, workout by completing an online fitness video together, or celebrate one another through award ceremonies for every class. These moments of connectivity brought about a lot of laughter, smiles, and pure joy.

Landrigan also shared some of the challenges,

As a social justice educator, inequities in the system are always at the forefront of my thinking and where I feel most limited as a teacher. Looking at this situation, the inequities are exacerbated. Some students have difficulty getting access to technology, so I call to check in just to make sure they’re okay and figure out what we can do as a school community. The systems of injustice are amplified right now. I see this even more as I see the rate at which COVID-19 affects communities of color. It makes the fight we’re engaged in that much more important.

He added that as an educator, he recognizes the need for human connection that comes along with trying to create and sustain real community through the internet, which isn’t the best medium. He shared,

This moment requires a much more fundamental sharing of myself. This shared experience of maintaining community from afar has deepened our relationships.

Landrigan’s reflections remind us of the importance of creating space for students to deepen learning through the exploration of a topic of interest to them and to encourage students to see themselves as researchers, curators, and educators. His work highlights how crucial it is to remain flexible and open, while leaning into the power of community.

Cierra Kaler-Jones is the Education Anew Fellow with Communities for Just Schools Fund and Teaching for Change. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park studying minority and urban education.

Shifting the Curriculum to What Matters Most to Students During COVID-19