You haven't heard from me in several weeks because I've been closing out the 2019-2020 school year.

It ended with a final rally of figuring out a pass/fail grading system and holding 1:1 conferences with every kid all in the span of 4 days.

It was year unlike any other in my 9 years of teaching, which sounds almost too cliché to write at this point.

But you signed up to hear a teacher's perspective on the intersection of business, tech, and education, so today I'm sharing lessons learned from this spring.

I've tried to share what was unique to my experience, and ignore platitudes that I've seen covered elsewhere.

The list you'll find below is based on 4 perspectives I've had for how COVID-19 affected education:

1. Teaching high school English
2. Observing how my son's pre-school moved to remote learning
3. Working with education companies on marketing projects
4. Interviewing founders on The EdTech Startup Show

Here's what I've learned...please hit reply or use the comment button to share the lessons you've learned, too.

1) There is no single story.

I wanted to punch my screen when I saw WSJ's headline about how remote learning "didn't work." (paywall) COMPARED TO WHAT!? A typical school year?

The only thing that remote learning did was reveal existing weaknesses in our systems and society. Parents juggled insane responsibilities and triaged their child care as best they could.

Teachers and school leaders changed, sometimes in a matter of a weekend or less, into teaching online.

And students had no choice in the matter, but from my perspective, many approached it with a maturity that was beyond their years.

2) Freedom of time and location are valuable to children, too.

My guiding mantra during the Spring of 2020 was "I'm grateful."

More time at home with my wife and my kids when they're young, more time to think about my teaching and the choices I make, and Thank God, health for family and friends.

While interacting with other parents, teachers, and students during the past three months or so, I kept hearing reports of people - even teenagers! - from all walks of life, spending more time with their parents, taking walks, etc.

Not only that, but many kids were able to roll with more of their natural rhythms when choosing to do work. This certainly beats asking 8-year-old boys to mostly sit still for 6 hours per day in a public school classroom.

3) There's an emptiness caused by the lack of in-person connection.

With all of the silver-linings, there was a nagging feeling of missing the day-to-day interactions with family, colleagues, friends, and students.

Despite all advances in technology, and even sometimes because of them, the value of in-person interactions for their social benefits (not necessarily professional) were magnified X100.

4) The curriculum problem is getting solved rapidly.

If there was one thing that few were left wanting during all of this, it was curriculum resources for teaching and learning.

Now, many families struggled to get access to WiFi or a reliable device during this time. Hopefully, more municipalities begin to view WiFi as a public utility, and 100% of school districts begin providing devices to students.

But when it comes to the materials needed for learning, we saw in full force how the Internet has brought the cost of curriculum content very close to zero. The opportunity now lies in curation, assessments, interactivity, and support.

5) Learning styles might be debunked, but personality differences are real.

The myth of learning styles is finally losing steam in much of education.

But one thing that was abundantly clear during the shutdown was how core differences in people's personalities had a huge impact in how they responded to this crisis. Yes, there were many other factors, but I couldn't help noticing a pattern.

Family, students, colleagues, and friends who were generally introverted may have fared better, and even secretly enjoyed parts of quarantine, while those who thrive on socializing and get energy from it may have struggled.

All of the examples are too personal to share, but I'm wondering if you noticed the same.

6) Strong leadership is more important than ever.

A better way to say it might be that strong communication skills are more important than ever.

Not only do people need to be clear, concise, and consistent in their communication during a time of crisis, a crisis when people are disrupted from their normal routine, and when people are relying only on digital communication...but -

Leaders also need to employ benevolent rhetoric well, too.

People need a vision for the future, and it's important for leaders to be able to effectively communicate that to their followers. Again, I noticed this at all levels of education and life during the crisis.

7) We are at the very beginning of all this.

Even if we get a vaccine tomorrow and all schools decide to re-open, the second and third order effects of this time period are just beginning:

• How will changes in the economy affect school budgets?
• How many parents will decide to homeschool or otherwise forgo public school?
• How many teachers, administrators, or entrepreneurs are hard at work at some crazy idea they got while they were stuck at home this Spring?
• How many students learned something new that will change their life?
• How many fell horribly behind?
• How many teachers discovered a whole new way to do their job?

We'll see.

For those who are new here, I began writing this letter last year as a daily email about the intersection of business, tech, and education.

I'm not quite ready to jump into a daily email again, but you can expect more original content and less link-sharing over the next few weeks. This is an experiment that I hope will continue in more original writing for you.

Hit reply and share your feedback. Or use the comment button below to leave a public comment.

Thanks for reading,

Gerard Dawson

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