I enjoyed reading this article this morning.
Even Google agrees there’s no going back to the old office life
In a way, it’s sad that it takes a pandemic for organizations to think seriously about how they go about business on a daily basis. But they are.
In this particular, It appears that commuting and working for five days a week, as per normal, just isn’t going to happen. Working from home has proven that there are better ways of doing business.
Being empathetic to workers wants and needs will undoubtedly turn into a better workplace, happier employees, and a new way to look at things. If you read through the article, you can see how the organization will go through the process of reinventing itself. Google isn’t the only one; if you follow any stories about businesses and services planning for the return to what will be the new normal, you can see that really smart people are learning from the past couple of years and making changes to workplace and rules.
Except in education. Quebec is ready to drop masking requirements in elementary and secondary school. ‘Not the time’ to drop classroom mask requirement, Montreal pediatrician says
A “return” to normal seems to be in the cards here and you know that Ontario will be ready to follow, one report indicating that it might come as early as the end of March.
There’s no hint anywhere that education has learned anything about the organization of education in the past two years. Hopefully, those ventilation systems weren’t just rented…
From my perspective, it seems that there’s a rush to return to what education was prior to the past two years. Of course, we can’t ignore the fact that there’s an election on the horizon and an element of the voting public listening for a message on cost cutting from the current government.
That’s really not conducive for any progressive thinking about how to make the educational organization better. Fortunately for students, there are educators in the classroom who are working with what they have to do things differently, do things better.
What are you doing now that you weren’t doing two years ago? What would you do to improve thing?
doug --- off the record 
Doug, I’ve actually blogged about these topics in a couple of different ways.
adunsiger.com/2022/03/05/what-is-our-why
self-reg.ca/could-covid-restrictions-have-supported-self-reg
Your last question is an interesting one. I might need coffee before answering this one. 🙂
Aviva
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Apparently the Ontario government has announced that they’re going to be making an announcement this morning. So there’s that.
In my Twitter feed this morning I saw a photo of a billboard outside of school that referenced doing things a new way rather than going back to the old way.
It will certainly be interesting to see how things evolve over the next few years.
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I think maybe some reconsiderations would be good. I found though that when restrictions loosened and we could go back as we were before, most classrooms seem to resemble previous set-ups (at least from what I see on social media). Is there safety for many of us in the known? I’m curious to see if changes happen, and I’m really curious to hear the announcement.
Aviva
P.S. As I write you this comment, I’m hearing a conversation in the hallway among kids about desk set-ups again as they were pre-COVID. There’s the student voice, I guess. 🙂
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