**Check out Part I here!**
Now that we’ve been back for a while; several things are clear.
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Change is constant. As soon as we get used to one aspect of our work, something changes and we have to learn to get used to something new.
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This is so rewarding, but also so tiring. It’s good to be back with kids and colleagues — even in these limited ways, but it feels like the work never ends, and the lines between “school” and “home” are blurrier than ever.
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Kids need a lot. What we can accomplish in remote/hybrid learning feels different than what we used to accomplish. No one is really sure of what to do with this reality given that standards and expectations have not changed in any explicit way.
This will be a session about navigating all of this — surfing the change, sidestepping the fatigue, and giving kids what they need — all while working with the tools that we have and within the paradigms that we’ve been given.
But these times call for new tools and newer paradigms. We are allowed to abandon yesterday’s thinking if it does not serve today’s needs. So this will also be a session about imagination. We will work toward new ideas, concepts, approaches, and methods that allow us to center students and care for ourselves.
CORNELIUS MINOR is a Brooklyn-based educator who works with teachers, school leaders, and leaders of community-based organizations to support equitable literacy reform in cities (and sometimes villages) across the globe. His latest book, We Got This, explores how the work of creating more equitable school spaces is embedded in our everyday choices — specifically in the choice to really listen to kids.
KASS MINOR is an inclusive educator who is deeply involved in local, inquiry-based teacher research and school community development. Alongside partnerships with the Teachers College Inclusive Classrooms Project and the New York City Department of Education, since 2005, she has worked as a teacher, staff developer, adjunct professor, speaker, and documentarian.