I’m Here for the Hard Re-Set: Post Pandemic Pedagogy to Preserve Our Culture

ABSTRACT

The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of the nation’s vulnerabilities—health care, economic, climate, and educational disparities—and put us all on alert. While many are scrambling for solutions to return to school in safe ways, this article speaks to the need to fundamentally rethink education and consider the pandemic as an opportunity to restart, or more precisely re-set, education using a more robust and culturally centered pedagogy. This article provides examples of the new ideas that scholars and practitioners are employing to ensure academic, cultural, and social success for students who were regularly placed at risk of failure because of their racial, cultural, and socioeconomic status.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Gloria Ladson-Billings

Gloria Ladson-Billings is the former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and faculty affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was the 2005-2006 president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Ladson-Billings’ research examines the pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. She also investigates Critical Race Theory applications to education. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and a member of several editorial boards. Her work has won numerous scholarly awards including the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Palmer O. Johnson outstanding research award. During the 2003-2004 academic year, she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In fall of 2004, she received the George and Louise Spindler Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education for significant and ongoing contributions to the field of educational anthropology. She holds honorary degrees from Umeå University (Umeå Sweden), University of Massachusetts-Lowell, the University of Alicante (Alicante, Spain), the Erickson Institute (Chicago), and Morgan State University (Baltimore). She is a 2018 recipient of the AERA Distinguished Research Award, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018.