“You can’t put a changed person in an unchanged environment.”
- Nicole D. Smith, Editorial Audience Director at Harvard Business Review
In the spring of 2021, as we looked towards a school year that we thought (at the time) would be a return to pre-pandemic life, we built a middle school schedule nearly identical to the one we used in 2019. An 8:00am start time. Five minute passing periods. Ten minutes for snack. And then school began. Almost immediately the reactions followed from parents, teachers and students: about the intensity of the schedule, the logic of the schedule, the exhaustion caused by the schedule.
Our middle school schedule followed the model that was successful in 2019 and prior, but it turns out we are all very different in 2022. Who we are as people - what we value, how we think, what we prioritize - has shifted, sometimes dramatically, during the pandemic. And while we don’t need to revolutionize education (or in this case, a schedule), we do need to take the foundations of what existed, tweak it for the people we are, and build something new. As I have shared with some of my colleagues, we don’t need to switch from an iPhone to an Android (no offense to Android users!), but we do need to upgrade to the latest iPhone model.
And I believe this is true whether we are talking about a middle school schedule, our weekend plans, or what a workplace looks like. I think back to the ways we lived in 2019: jam-packed weekends in which kids were carted from birthday party to activity to soccer game and home for the babysitter so the parents could go out; workplaces where we were expected to be in the office from 8am on Monday through 5pm on Friday, managing all of the complex personalities that come with an organization; and schools where students moved from class to class, juggling their books and homework assignments and squeezing social interactions to the crevices between classes. And I think about the people we are now, after having experienced the collective trauma - and the collective slow down - of the last 21 months.
While I don’t yet know how schools or workplaces should be built when designed for the people of 2022, I do know I am noticing a few trends:
- People want to be in community more than ever. We are craving connection. And we need to more intentionally design spaces and programs and opportunities for people to connect. The most successful programs we have run at school so far this year have been ones when people have a chance to come together, whether in formal structures like a Parent Council or in informal structures like socializing during the Parent Celebration.
- We have forgotten certain behaviors that are essential for getting along in the world. We can see the extremes of this in the news about airplane passenger behaviors, but there are plenty of articles as well about returning to the office. As a student recently told me, “I got used to the fact that I didn’t need to interact regularly with those people who I don’t really like.” We are out of practice in digging deep for patience when we are annoyed or in taking a beat to respond when resolving a conflict - we can’t just turn off our screens or ignore a text message when we are in person.
- There is a deep need to be seen for who we are and for what we contribute. One recent study hypothesized that this need for recognition is rooted in our own sense of how much each of us have had to adapt while juggling very different responsibilities than before. We are wired to want recognition and kind words to acknowledge this adaptation. And while most of the research on this looks at workplace culture, I don’t believe the desire to be seen is limited to our employment.
- And finally, people are being more authentic. After being home for a year (or more) and having the freedom to be their “real selves” they are unwilling to pretend to be someone they are not.
Some of these changes are beautiful, some of these changes are hard to grapple with, and some of these changes mean that the current environment does not match the people we are. It goes back to the quote I started with, which I wrote to sit on my desk: “You can’t put a changed person in an unchanged environment.”
And yet, isn’t that the whole world right now? Aren’t we all changed people in unchanged environments? As a school, we are designed very much as we were in 2019. Our policies are the same. Our schedules are the same. Our fundamental structures are the same. But we are not the same students or teachers or parents. We are changed people living in a (mostly) unchanged environment.
The opportunity we are afforded then is to dream and to create – how do we build a school, a community, and a world that meet the needs of us as changed human beings? How do staff members come together to build a workplace? How do parents make meaning and community for their families? How do we consider what children need and build schedules and policies and curricula to meet those needs?
This reimagining will succeed if we are each active participants in building our changed environment. And I for one can’t wait to see what comes next.
