The educational interruptions resulting from the pandemic have impacted students both academically and socially. To that end, we do believe that, when navigating how to address learning loss, teachers need to focus on both social and academic experiences. Being back in school buildings might present children (as well as teachers) with continued fears and uncertainties. After experiencing remote learning, isolation, and trauma, however, re-establishing a social-emotional balance is critical for kids. Though you may want to focus on academics, for many students, it is necessary to first build relationships. Without a strong sense of social-emotional stability, it's that much tougher for them to focus on learning.
Detailed planning and commitment are essential in managing student learning loss as educators aim to fully understand the pandemic's impact. Not only are many kids experiencing new academic gaps, others still need lots of social-emotional support. And, it's our belief that returning to social-emotional norms will truly help students academically. To that end, we provide many STEAM tools that can help all instructors better set students up for recovering from the emotional and academic effects of the pandemic.
How our team can help in learning to address SEL.
- We offer EdTech tools that help classroom educators teach both hard skills in STEM subjects and soft skills that will help students in other areas outside the classroom
- Our offerings can help teachers to reduce skills gaps, accelerate academic growth, and even promote structured social-emotional development in children
- Our wide range of products, such as classroom robots like the Root Robot and Ozobot Evo, can help kids build STEAM skills, like coding, computational thinking, and an understanding of electronics while also helping them develop key social skills, such as collaboration, persistence, and critical thinking
Different EdTech tools could help students develop hard skills that could increase success in STEM related fields as well as these soft skills. Our incredibly wide range of STEM and MakerEd solutions are perfect for combining STEM and SEL lessons. Uniting STEAM and SEL in the classroom helps educators close skills gaps, accelerate academic growth, and promote student mental health. These are all critical areas when it comes to helping children overcome potential learning losses following the pandemic. And, purposefully integrating technology in their classroom can help prepare teachers for future instructional shifts. We know that their learning environments are regularly evolving and that digital learning is huge to maintaining a flow.
What educational leaders need to know.
As you might know, we provide valuable STEAM and EdTech resources for teachers to integrate into the everyday curriculum. We firmly believe in these tools when it comes to children recovering from the various educational effects of the pandemic. Our abundance of hands-on solutions align with efforts to address the effects of learning loss with the use of technology tools as a part of supplemental learning initiatives. Using classroom technology, like educational robots, engineering kits, 3D printers, and others may help students recapture pre-pandemic excitement and rebuild some of the creative confidence they may have lost in the last few years. In the process, their social-emotional strength tends to increase as well.
If you have received federal COVID-19 emergency relief funds, including educational funds allocated from the American Rescue Plan Act, the CARES Act, or even the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), we may be able to help. Our online store is home to STEM solutions that those in our education community can purchase using these federal funds. With this funding, instructors can potentially make up for lost learning time and distance learning technology costs. Plus, it could also help in continuing to shrink the digital divide and SEL gaps related to remote education.
Our team can help teachers identify competency and skills gaps and develop plans to address them. If you are interested in learning more about allocating relief funds or how STEM tools can help in addressing SEL gaps and learning loss, please feel free to contact us. We'd be happy to set up a free consultation session with someone on our team. You can also find some of the most effective tech tools for enhancing your SEL below. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more.
