Texas colleges of education update curricula after COVID pandemic

When COVID-19 forced school districts across the country to close their buildings and move classes online in the spring of 2020, teachers were left scrambling to find new ways to do the job many had done the same way for decades. Although teachers and students have been back in school for more than a year, many of the changes brought about by the pandemic are likely here to stay. But digital tools aren’t the only change: Teachers must now find ways to work with students who are still suffering the mental health effects of the pandemic. Now, teacher preparation programs in Texas and nationwide are beginning to incorporate coursework designed to help the students understand how to teach using the same digital tools that long-tenured educators struggled to adopt during school shutdowns, and to prepare them to work with students who are dealing with trauma.

Leaders of those programs say they made those changes out of a recognition that the teaching profession may never look the same as it did before the pandemic. “We were very aware that we were at a crossroads in the teaching profession,” said Randy Bomer, dean of the College of Education at the University of North Texas. Shortly before the pandemic began, the college began a complete redesign of its elementary education curriculum — a major project that teacher preparation programs don’t take on very often, Bomer said. Historically, curricula at colleges of education have been relatively “fastened down” compared to other majors, he said, and don’t leave students with much choice about the courses they take. “There’s a lot of things teachers need to know and be able to do, and so, often, faculty will load up the curriculum, and it just kind of stays stuck in place for decades,” he said. Although the college began the curriculum overhaul in response to a change in state law and not with the pandemic in mind, it soon became obvious that the curriculum would need to change to prepare future teachers for the new roles they’d be stepping into, Bomer said. The fact that the college was already in the middle of that process gave it a head start, he said. The remodeled curriculum still covers all the things elementary teachers have always needed to know, Bomer said. Students will still learn how to teach reading, writing and math. But now, they also take courses on how to respond to students’ mental health needs and how to incorporate digital tools into their classrooms, he said. Students also leave the program better equipped to respond to a wide range of unpredictable situations — “more ‘normal’ ones as well as extraordinary ones like fully remote teaching,” he said.