Teachers Respond: What the Data Imply About Fall 2021 K–3 Classroom Composition

This learning and engagement opportunity featured a panel of K–3 teachers from across the country, along with leaders of teacher support and advocacy organizations, responding to the data indicating changes and challenges for the fall 2021 K–3 classroom composition. Panelists shared how they are preparing for classes full of students without a full year of Head Start, pre-K or kindergarten and for whom everyday attendance is not yet routine or habit. Pre-K through third-grade teachers — Courtney Crenshaw, Jamita Horton, Colleen Mason, Treasure Jones and Lyndsey Bonomolo — shared how they are intentionally focusing on social-emotional learning (SEL), using data to differentiate for student needs, and how they are keeping front and center the reality that this year will present similar challenges they have faced before but at much larger magnitudes.

Following the teachers, a second panel of leaders from teacher-support organizations — including Evan Stone of Educators for Excellence, Jessica Tang of the Boston Teachers Union, Mark Teoh of Teach Plus, Priscilla Forsyth of Teach For America New York and Dan Weisberg of TNTP — discussed the broader implications of the exacerbated challenges and provided a vision for ways to effectively invest recovery dollars on strategies that best support students and educators. They echoed the sentiment that social-emotional learning is key to recovery and advanced the crucial notion that choosing either academics over social-emotional learning or vice versa is a false choice. Key strategies were shared, including addressing the physical conditions in school systems, accelerating learning rather than solely employing traditional remediation strategies, and including adults at all levels of the education system in the plans to build social-emotional learning skills for children. Panelists shared a wealth of information on different approaches to balance academic and social-emotional recovery and to invest in educators as a key lever to build back better.