There is a certain sadness in thinking about what’s going to happen in the fall, not just in language education but in all subjects. Teachers will again walk down to the faculty lounge and complain about their students, just as they do every year.
But this time their complaints will all be centered around what Covid did to their programs. Realizing that their students didn’t learn anything in the 2020-2021 academic year because of Covid in the online teaching environment, they will get emotional out of fear about how they look and start trying to figure out how to “make up” what was lost this year and what can be done to get their students “caught up” to where they should be.
The problem with that line of thinking is that the curriculum is not the thing to worship. The children are the highest concern.
The poor unfortunate teachers will be thinking about what they are teaching, and forgetting that they need to look at what they teach next year in terms of what is best for their students. But they won’t do that. They will be busy pushing their students to get caught up. The students will rebel and there will be some ugly scenes next year.
It could all be avoided if the teachers would only focus on what the kids are experiencing, and not pushing them to do two years of work in one.