Illustration by Valerie Burgess
As an art teacher for the past 20 years, I have been fueled by the energy in my classroom studio — laughter, discussions flying, big ideas and the extraordinary inner workings of the teenage brain. But this year it’s been unnaturally quiet.
I am used to passionate arguments and crass fart jokes. I am used to witnessing hilarious storytelling episodes and amazing learning breakthroughs. I am not used to looking around to find that all of my students are watching TikTok. It is quiet, and it’s not because students are hard at work. It’s because we’ve lost them.
My profession is filled with amazing problem-solvers. From figuring out how to hide 35 students in a closet during an active shooter drill to creating seating charts, my colleagues and I are constantly finding creative ways to reach and teach students. But this year, the colossal problem of post-pandemic learning feels insurmountable. And no one is listening to us.
After two years of pandemic learning, the difference in our students is devastating. My students are usually eager to enter my classroom and engage. But this year they don’t talk — not to each other, not to me. Many come to class and lay their heads down on the table, watching their phones or sleeping. It’s as if the past two years have erased the curiosity and passion of an entire generation.
Like all of us, children are not who they were before the pandemic. They are coming to school with increased mental illness, anger and decreased attention spans. There are more fights, and there is more bullying.
When our kids returned to in-person learning, they were more aware of their surroundings. They noticed the same broken HVAC systems, peeling paint and police officers patrolling the hallways. They experienced trauma at home, and more trauma as they reentered our buildings.
Our district is panicking about learning loss, but they ignore our collective needs. Amid missing fire alarm systems and bricks falling from walls, we are expected to introduce new content even as our students see no reason to participate in learning. We are told to focus on state tests and graduation rates even though our community is ailing.
Teachers, principals and school support staff are having to deal with so much more than the education of students, but we aren’t given the tools to do so. This is why teachers are leaving the profession.
Meanwhile, many students struggle to visualize a world that’s different from the world they now live in. It’s not just that our kids are different, it’s that they don’t believe in school anymore.
Our children are not going to dream of being engineers, or fall in love with books, or create something beautiful if they cannot lift their heads off their desks. I once had a student who skipped school and took a train to Philadelphia with her grandmother to see the Cezanne painting that I showed in class. This year I struggle to make a single student look up at my projector when I am showing anything to them.
We are teaching old ideas to children who cannot learn the same way that they learned three years ago. Our community is failing a generation of children because we aren’t acknowledging what teachers are witnessing firsthand.
Our kids are not going to overcome this disengagement and hopelessness unless we act. Teachers can’t fix this by attending more meetings or filling out more spreadsheets. Students can’t recover their engagement through increased seat time.
Listen to the teachers: We need to revive the curiosity that made students joyful, or we will lose an entire generation of kids.
Rebecca Field (she/her) teaches art at John Marshall High School. She is a Harvard University Divinity School Religious Literacy Project Fellow and serves on the Black Lives Matter at School national curriculum committee and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Advisory Council.
