Part 4: Interlude (Flexibility is Key)
This is part of a series that chronicles the ongoing collaboration between Tufts CEEO and Little Singer Community School in the Navajo Nation. Click here to view the whole series.
When gathering all my hand-written notes to compose these blog posts, one major theme keeps appearing over and over again in my reflections about the work we’re doing: the importance of being flexible! When I was first training to become a physics teacher back in my undergrad years, I had an excellent education professor who always harped on this key attribute that made for a great teacher. I thought I understood what she meant at the time, but of course you never really grasp the depth of complexity and chaos that teachers are asked to grapple with on a daily basis until you’re in the thick of it yourself. One of the things I love about working on projects like this one with Tom and the Little Singer Community School is that I’m always facing fresh new challenges and creating solutions for novel situations.
This past year has been so incredibly hard on educators and students (and their families!). The sudden pivot to online education at home dealt a very real trauma to everyone involved, and we’re all still reeling from it. While educational systems from elementary schools to universities continue even now to work overtime to ensure the highest possible quality education is being delivered, it can feel like we’re still just scrambling to meet our most basic needs even a whole year into the pandemic. I sometimes think about how different this project would have been in the “before times”. I could have traveled out to Little Singer to meet Tom in person and work alongside his students in his classroom. I could have seen the places they work and live and gained a more immediate sense of what life is like in their community. We could have done so many things so much differently. But, that’s not how it worked out and that’s OK.
I’m thankful for the opportunity to work remotely on this project and stretch my flexibility skills to the max. In working with Tom and his students, I’ve grown as an educator and gained great insight into how the future of online instruction could easily serve us in a myriad of ways — when it’s done with sufficient planning and preparation of course!
I’m in awe at the persistence with which Tom and his students pursue excellence in education. They demonstrate great flexibility every day and roll with whatever works to get through their lessons and achieve their learning goals. The fact that they are going above and beyond the basic curricular expectations to bring in playful, hands-on engineering in the midst of everything is truly remarkable.
