Panel to address COVID-19’s impact on K-12 schools, students and fall
After the coronavirus pandemic upended the spring semester, parents, students and teachers across the country are wondering how different the coming year will look for K-12 schools. For some, back-to-school will mean a full return to in-person classes while others will continue online learning or navigate a mix of both in person and remote learning.
As students adapt to changes at school, how can parents and teachers make sure they are supported and aren’t falling behind?
On Monday, Tulane University School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian Edwards will host a Tulane’s Innovation Series panel discussion about how schools across the country adapted to the pandemic, how those changes may affect learning and how parents and students are coping with coronavirus uncertainties this fall. The webinar will also address how gaps in educational opportunity—by race, income and class—are likely widening as a result of COVID-19, a disease that has disproportionately affected minority communities. These inequities are happening at a time when students are witnessing a national movement against systemic anti-Black racism.
“COVID-19’s Impact on K-12 Schools, Students and Lessons for Fall,” will feature Douglas Harris, a national expert in public education, pediatrician and child psychiatrist Dr. Lauren Teverbaugh and Nghana Lewis, associate professor of English and Africana Studies.
The event, which will take place at 1 p.m., Monday, July 13, is free, but participants must register here.
Harris is the founding director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, national director of Research on Education Access and Choice, professor and chair of economics, and Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education. He is leading an effort to collect data from approximately 150,000 school websites across the country to see how the nation’s education system is responding to the coronavirus pandemic. The study looks at how students are learning when school buildings are closed, how schools were delivering online instruction and how students stayed in contact with teachers during the shutdown.
Dr. Lauren Teverbaugh is a pediatrician and child and adolescent psychiatrist at Tulane University School of Medicine. She has a diverse background in research and work centered around social and community activism. She provides patient care in community health care settings and supervision and teaching to the medical students, residents and fellows in school-based clinics.
Nghana Lewis is an associate professor of English and Africana Studies; a faculty affiliate of the School of Law; and an adjunct professor with the Department of Psychology. She has published and lectured widely on her research, which cross-sectionally studies HIV/AIDS, hip hop culture and black women's health.
As dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane, Edwards oversees 34 departments and programs in the social sciences, humanities, and fine and performing arts. As a scholar, Edwards examines the intersections between culture and politics, how ideas and attitudes about foreign spaces are formed in relation to cultural representations, and the ways in which contemporary American culture circulates globally, with particular focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
Edwards recently published a widely-circulated column in The Hill about how the still-unfolding COVID-19 crisis will be the defining moment for college and high-school-aged students, which he calls "the fractured generation."
