I have hope and even optimism about the generation of K-12 and college students who have been impacted by the pandemic.
I don’t see much of that optimism in the news coverage I read about these students. The results of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that were released two weeks ago demonstrated that elementary and middle school students learned significantly less about reading and math during the pandemic years than students did previously. The New York Times reported this week that as a group students arriving on college campuses have significant learning deficits that pre-pandemic students didn’t have, and that colleges are having to adjust their instruction to compensate.
I’m a natural pessimist, but the students in my college physics class this semester have shown me a level of resilience and civility that I didn’t see before the pandemic arrived in 2020.
I pre-test my students on physics concepts at the beginning of the semester, and in this fall’s results I saw the impact of pandemic-curtailed learning. This semester’s pre-test results were the worst I had ever seen, by far. Even the students whose transcripts said they were well-prepared for success in my classroom had problems. For the first time, I saw significant numbers of students who had taken AP physics classes in high school but had learned little or nothing about physics.
As the semester started, I braced myself for a difficult semester with a classroom full of contentious students angry about their lack of success in my classroom but unwilling or unable to do the work required to learn physics with understanding. But the semester has been quite different than I expected.
As the semester progressed, I noticed first of all that most students were not angry – not outwardly, anyway. Instead, they insisted on maintaining at least the appearance of a positive attitude, which is very important and very apparent in my studio-style SCALE-UP physics classroom where our three-hour class periods are full of student collaboration on labs and problem-solving (and yes, it can be loud in my classroom). Students who were struggling were accepting responsibility for their difficulties.
And then I saw something else. Every fall semester, many students struggle as they adapt both to my active learning classroom and to my insistence that their understanding of the concepts of physics be stronger than their ability to manipulate equations. Some figure it out – the light bulb goes on and they suddenly understand what it means to understand the subject in the way I demand. Others never quite get it, and watching them struggle and eventually surrender is always heartbreaking.
But this semester, the number of students who have persevered in the face of early semester failure to achieve a level of mastery halfway through the semester or even later has been much larger than I’ve seen in the past.
Several years ago, it was fashionable to use the word “grit” to describe this sort of triumph after an extended early semester bout with disappointment. But I prefer the word resilience. This semester’s students are the most resilient I can remember seeing in my 36 years as a physics professor at Florida State University.
Leadership isn’t built in individuals who sail easily through every task given to them. Instead, leadership is developed in those who struggle through setbacks to finally master their own disappointment and, ultimately, the task itself.
My students are showing signs that they may become outstanding leaders.
I thought about this on Tuesday evening while I was addressing the 130 middle school students who were inducted into the Future Physicists of Florida at FSU’s Panama City campus and their families. The families living in Panama City and the surrounding Bay County have experienced even more catastrophe than most of us during the last four years. Their first catastrophe was category 5 Hurricane Michael in October, 2018. The trauma of surviving the event itself was tremendous for many families, but the frustrations of losing the infrastructure of community life that these families count on every day challenged their very cores. And then the pandemic arrived only 17 months later.
Shortly before I read the names of the inductees, I told their parents that I applaud them for guiding their children through the repeated heartbreaks of the hurricane and pandemic to the level of success that led to their induction that evening. I also told them about the resilience and civility of my own students this semester, and I said that perhaps their children’s experience with surviving repeated catastrophe and thriving anyway will build them into the generation of outstanding leaders that our state and nation need. I told them not to hold their children back out of worry, but to let them aim for the sky, even if it means they sometimes fail, because resilience in the face of failure builds the sort of character that our nation and world need desperately now.
I’m a pessimist, but I feel hope about the generation of students now in school, despite the test scores that seem so gloomy. Perhaps these students will rebuild the heart of our nation.
Bridge to Tomorrow 