Education was one of the many sectors of American life that was completely discombobulated in 2020 when COVID-19 shut down our county and our country.
Doug Selwyn was a member of a group assembled in Greenfield in the summer of that year to figure out how school would be conducted in the fall.
“The state said, ‘You’ve got three options and you have about seven minutes to decide what do to,’” he told me in a recent interview.
“As we looked more deeply we had to consider all the factors that were involved,” he explained.
“That’s everything from what’s going on the kids’ homes [and] thinking about eight year olds sitting in front of the computer five hours a day to getting them food and medical attention, the kinds of things that through inequality some kids get all the time and some don’t … We also had to recognize that employers are affected by what choices the schools make.”
In the end, faced with three impossible possibilities — shutting down completely, holding school “as usual,” and adopting a hybrid model between the two — they decided to go for remote learning, despite the challenges that model presented for both students and teachers.
Along the way, Selwyn recalled, they had to consider the larger function of education in the community. Although they couldn’t formally consider the issue of education’s role in society in that current crisis mode, they were confronted with “the absolutely overwhelming interdependence of school and all aspects of life.”
Selwyn has been an educator for more than 30 years at all levels — elementary, secondary and college. The experience of being on the COVID-19 committee prompted him to reach out to educators across the country to ask them to tell him about their work and their hopes and dreams for American education.
The result is the new book “At the Center of All Possibilities: Transforming Education for Our Children’s Future” (Peter Lang, 228 pages, paperback, $40.95). The book will be launched locally on Monday, Aug. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Lava Center on Main Street in Greenfield.
For the book Selwyn asked his fellow educators a few basic questions. Some of his respondents he knew; others, he did not. He outlines his basic questions early in the book.
“How do we educate our young people so that they know what they need to know and learn what they need to learn so that they are able to live healthy and sustainable lives, and to pass on a healthy and thriving society (and planet) to their children and grandchildren?” he writes.
“What do we value most, that we hope they will carry with them and how do we help them to learn it? What role might schools play in this process and how do we transform our current system into one that truly meets the needs of all of our children?”
He told me that not all of the educators answered all the questions, but most brought valuable perspectives to the discussion. The book offers essays about teaching in different settings — primary school, high school, college, even prison.
The contributors come across as the kind of teachers every child (even every adult) would like to have. They offer fascinating solutions for tailoring schooling not just to the needs but also to the lives of a diverse populace.
The book gave me hope, but it also led me to realize that there is a lot of work for all of us — not just educators but also community members — to do to make our educational system work optimally for our children.
Selwyn said that sifting through the essays that were submitted, and dealing with the contributors who in the end couldn’t submit essays because they were overwhelmed with crises at their schools, brought him face to face with “the weight of what we put on our teachers.”
The book is designed to inspire readers to look for a better way to structure education that takes into account first and foremost the needs and experiences of students.
Selwyn said that he hopes “At the Center of All Possibilities” will be read by “teacher-educators and people going into teaching, families interested in helping their communities and policy folks — either within school districts or within local and state governments.”
“How do we serve our community? How do we serve our kids? This is the biggest challenge,” he insisted.
The evening at the Lava Center should be informative but informal. “I will talk a little, read a little. Two of the contributors of the book will talk about why they responded as they did,” Selwyn predicted. He added that the launch will be recorded and the recording will be available at the Lava Center’s website.
For those who cannot attend but wish to purchase a copy of the book may do so through the Greenfield-based retailer Massive Bookshop (https://massivebookshop.com/); through the publisher, Peter Lang (https://www.peterlang.com/); or through what Doug Selwyn calls “that Amazon place.”
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning author and singer. Her next book will be “Pot Luck: Random Acts of Cooking.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.