In response to last week’s post on rethinking early education and care in the aftermath of the pandemic, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of the Brookings Institution and Temple University pointed me to a different take on the same topic, An Unprecedented Time in Education Demands Unprecedented Change. Hirsh-Pasek and her colleagues issue a call for a “playful learning and a breadth of skills approach to education” that focuses on the six C’s: collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence.
Likewise, in The 74 Paul Reville makes the case for a Whole Child Paradigm Shift in which community children’s cabinets oversee cradle-to-career systems of opportunity and support. Laura Bornfreund and Lisa Guernsey emphasize the need to design systems that are responsive to trauma, economic distress, and physical and mental health issues in the Hechinger Report. And writing in the New York Times Shantell and Conor P. Williams argue that the pandemic demonstrates the need to build a better child care system, one that prioritizes both children’s and caregivers’ mental health.
Connecting all of these perspectives is a clear throughline: the need to design comprehensive community-wide approaches that address the needs of the whole child. For a practical action guide on comprehensive systems produced by Boston College’s Center for Optimized Student Support, see The Whole Child: Building Systems of Integrated Student Support During and After Covid-19.
And don’t miss the remaining two webinars in our series on School-Community Partnerships for the Whole Child: Partner with Families on December 3 and Lead Strategically and Continuously Improve on December 10.