In early March, the US and nearly all countries around the world initiated some form of shut down and shelter in place order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, closing schools and public gatherings of any kind all around the world. With children at home, many schools quickly embraced some form of distance learning, revealing the immense chasm of the digital divide. The pandemic immediately transformed from a global health crisis, to an economic disaster, adding to the issue of internet access, more immediate concerns such as food security, housing access, and safety.
Despite the gravity of the situation, our society has learned important lessons about education that we can build on in the future. This crisis has forced educational institutions to reinvent their roles from that of transferring information to enabling learning. The shift to distance learning has afforded opportunities to educate differently, to encourage self-learning, and to provide opportunities to learn from diverse sources. But more importantly, the attempt to continue education amid school closures has taught us an important lesson about the role of community in teaching our children. If it takes a village to raise a child, we must empower the village to teach the child. Creating a more decentralized, community-based approach to education in which institutions have accountability to children’s families and the ability and desire to empathize with student’s lives is key.