If there’s one thing everyone in education can agree on, it’s that the COVID-19 pandemic has had profound implications for schools. Among other things, it has exposed and intensified deep systemic inequities, and it has left many students and teachers struggling with the effects of stress, trauma, and disrupted routines. At the same time, it has opened up potential new pathways for teaching and learning, and it has brought much-needed attention to the role of schools as social-service providers and connectors. It has also illuminated the ingenuity and resiliency of educators, students, and families. 

All this has created a strong sense of urgency around this school year, as schools seek to regroup and heal from a year and a half of pandemic-clouded conditions. For many educators, a big part of that urgency is a recognized need for deep-seated change—not just from the makeshift approaches of the past year but also from the ways schools have historically operated. 

The articles in this certificate course, selected from the September 2021 issue of Education Leadership® (EL®), take a broad and strategic look at what’s important in education now and what’s next, exploring how schools and educators can work differently, in light of all that’s transpired and all we’ve learned, to better serve students in this pivotal school year and beyond. 

Accordingly, the selected readings address a range of interrelated topics. Several of them focus on technology or systems change. They look at how schools’ recent experiences with remote learning and asynchronous learning, for example, might foster needed structural and curricular transformations—and, significantly, where they fell short. Other pieces shed new light on specific instructional approaches, such as differentiation, personalization, and inquiry-based instruction, that have gained heightened attention as learning-recovery solutions. Still others offer tips and reflections on strengthening social-emotional learning and relationship-building as schools reopen. 

For all their differences, however, the readings have many things in common. The most critical of these is an emphasis on the importance of attending closely to students’ needs—that is, of becoming less bound by convention and more boldly student-centered.