May 2025

Recovery, “new normal,” learning loss, opportunity loss—we have heard so many things about the effect the pandemic had on students. Some schools had extended closures, others opened almost immediately. All schools faced significant absenteeism, and based on current national reports (Kearney, Dupont, Fensken, & Gonzálvez, 2023), the absence rates have not returned to pre-2020 levels. How do all of these things fit together? How do we discuss all of this at one time?

I prefer to talk about all of this at once through the lens of “disrupted learning.” Disrupted learning is not a new concept or new reality. It has been researched and discussed in relation to many human-made and natural events; recent ones include Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, the 2019–20 wildfire outbreaks in New Zealand, and the Indian Ocean Tsunami. While we are not alone in our current situation, disrupted learning has never occurred on such a large scale in the US as it did in 2020–2022. You may be asking why we are still talking about this in 2025, and you would not be alone. Yet, as the NAEP results and absentee rates have shown, we have not recovered from these learning disruptions. Furthermore, these recent events have had a profound impact on both children and adults (not just parents, but teachers, staff, and school leaders).

One possible reason we have not yet recovered might be that we, educators and educational leaders, have not had access to information and research on these learning disruptions: what we know happens when learning is disrupted on this scale, and how to both manage the situation and improve it. What can we learn from these events and from neuroscience that can help us recover and rebuild our school communities? How can we heal and move forward? Let’s dig in and find out. 

Bite 1: Reconnect! Plug your students back into their community

Students (and staff) need connection! They need to reconnect to each other and with the larger school community. As a former US Surgeon General, Vivek H. Murthy, stated, loneliness is at epidemic levels in the United States (Together, 2020). Our students and staff are feeling it. How can we help our students find their connection and place within our classrooms and school communities? One way is to devote the first 5 minutes to supporting students’ social health through conversation slides and Questions of the Day, non-curricular questions that dig deeper than surface questions, helping students learn how to share from a place of openness, which requires vulnerability. 

Other teachers have begun the first class of the week for each period with a “Tell me something good” chat, in which students talk to each other about a moment they can be proud of from the past week or weekend. The Inspiring Connections curriculum does this with the Prelude. In Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, author Peter Liljedahl suggests using non-curricular tasks for the first week or two of classes, and then again after longer holiday breaks or when students appear to be isolating or distancing themselves from each other. These tasks have students focused on how they can work together productively to solve a novel puzzle they cannot seem to solve on their own.  

I have been asked how I can devote so much time to these strategies and still teach all that students need to learn. My response is simple: I do not have time NOT to ensure my students are connected to each other, to me, and to our school community. That is because students who feel connected, seen, and heard are able to process new information through the prefrontal cortex, but students who feel significant loneliness, social anxiety, stress, or isolation process new information through the amygdala. When we process through the amygdala, we employ only one filter: “Will this help me survive?” If the answer is yes, we focus on it and retain the information, but if the answer is no, we shift the information to a general storage bin, kind of like shoving it under the bed to clean your room quickly. The information does not leave, but it is very difficult to find and retrieve it for later use. The fact that we keep storing all of this information in a general bin can cause us to feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and cognitively spent. 

However, if we process through the prefrontal cortex, we employ three filters. We first ask, “Is this in any way related to information we already know?” If the answer is no, we release it from our working memory. If the answer is yes, we shift to the second filter, asking, “Is this information relevant to us personally in some way?” If the answer is no, we release it from our working memory. If the answer is yes, then we ask a final question, “Is there a value to learning and retaining this information?” If the answer is no, we release it from our working memory. If this answer is yes, then we are able to store the new information in a very specific location, tagged with how we determined it was connected to previous knowledge or experience, how the information is personally relevant, and finally, what value the information has. This allows us to quickly retrieve it for later use.  

Essentially, by spending time on connection, I am ensuring that my students are ready to learn and their brains are primed to selectively store important information while letting go of unnecessary information. This keeps my learners’ brains from being overloaded and reduces their mental fatigue. The payoff is far greater than the investment.

Additionally, teachers who use connection techniques weekly have lower absence rates and report lower levels of toxic stress. Since the difference between toxic stress and tolerable stress is the presence of supportive relationships, the investment seems to provide both student and teacher with a stronger sense of connectedness, translating to supportive relationships over time. 

Bite 2: Never underestimate the value of puzzling

A second strategy to support students’ recovery and rebuilding is to deemphasize answer-getting and over-emphasize the process of puzzling. After students experienced disrupted learning, they began to feel underprepared for their coursework, as though they were no longer as good at learning as they once were. This can be attributed to many things, but one major result is that students feel as though they should already know how to solve a problem before beginning, and they feel that if they do not know how to move through a problem, the problem is unsolvable to them. Students’ initial visualizing and predicting behaviors have decreased drastically, and students are relying more on learned procedures and working with more abstract strategies.

By rephrasing the work we do mathematically as puzzling, we clearly and noticeably indicate that students are not meant to already know what to do and in what order, but rather, students are meant to try something, analyze what happened, and then use that information to try something else. We communicate that the goal is to find and figure out a pathway through the puzzle. Now the focus lands squarely on how students are able to move through the puzzle (the strategy or the journey) rather than just on the answer. This positions students as both learners and coaches as they share their pathways with others and learn from others’ pathways in turn. 

Moreover, this suggests that math is all about learning from any failures and building a prediction and reaction schema that will give us an edge on similar puzzles. It also suggests that failure is an expected part of success in mathematics. 

So, how do we puzzle? Initially, we can change our language. Instead of “solving a problem” or even “solving a puzzle” (which suggests the action we should be doing is solving) we can “puzzle through a task,” suggesting the action we are doing is puzzling. When we discuss these tasks as a whole class or in small collaborative teams, we can ask about what students did that did not work and why they think it did not work, as well as asking what they did that worked and why that was successful when the other was not. This will help decrease misconceptions and overgeneralizations while also communicating accurate expectations for complexity, difficulty, and the need to fail forward. 

Additionally, we can provide access to ideas by using visual or physical puzzles. 

For example, when teaching students about solving linear equations, we can use algebra tiles and hanger diagrams first, before introducing the ideas of inverse operations. This will allow students to recognize that the “rules” are about maintaining equal relationships, undoing a process or operation to get to the simplest possible relationship, and using and making zeros (since they are really helpful). We can use online graphing calculators and the concept of thin-slicing to allow students to figure out the “punchline” instead of giving away the punchline and asking students to practice using it.

When we solve a puzzle in real life, we tend to start with a simple piece, like an edge piece. We then connect it to the next piece (slightly less simple) and connect that to something a bit more complex, and so on. This is the same thing that students do with thin-slicing lessons. The increasingly complex slices build up to an enduring understanding that students can discover and describe in their own words/ways.

Finally, during consolidation and closure, we can celebrate the failures as ways of learning. We can celebrate what did not work as we look at what did work. We can celebrate risk-taking. Just like our digital GPS redirects us to new paths, we can celebrate moving from a road that did not work to a road that did, moving from a strategy that did not work to a strategy that did. 

Bite 3: Are we back to parallel play? How to support healthy socialization opportunities

Have you recently driven by a group of pre-teens or teens hanging out? I have. I picked up my teen as they hung out after school with friends. I pulled up and saw all of them sitting alongside each other, looking at their phones. When my teen got in the car, I asked, “What happened? Why was everyone on their phone? Had there been an argument?” My teen was genuinely surprised. My teen said the group was talking to each other via the group chat. It has become completely normal to engage with peers in a parallel play situation, where they “play” (interact digitally) next to each other instead of interacting face-to-face.

As a result of the significant disruption to and slow recovery of our public selves following learning disruptions, we have become significantly under-socialized. We have forgotten how to socialize and feel uncomfortable connecting in the 3D world with peers. Students, and even adults, need support in socializing in healthy ways. This means helping them understand what healthy socialization looks like, sounds like, and feels like—and it means scaffolding healthy socialization through norms and structures until it becomes natural again. In order for this to become natural, we must support our students in reflecting on their socialization and goal setting to improve these social skills. 

One way that we can do this is by using status checks. 

These are simple visuals that are explained verbally and reflected on personally. Then we encourage students to set goals for their next interaction based on their reflection. For example, I might use a “Where was your voice?” status check.

When cueing students to set goals, consider some of these conversation points:

• If your voice is heard more than most, you may want to listen more closely to others’ ideas before sharing.
• Or you may want to work on being okay with awkward silence. If there is no awkward silence, then others may not feel it is their turn to share.
• If your voice was heard less than most, you might set a goal to be brave and share your ideas even if you are not sure they are correct. Or, you might need to interrupt and advocate for sharing your ideas, too, if you have someone who is always sharing their ideas first.
• If your voice was heard about as much as others, you may want to set a goal for both keeping a balanced voice and also encouraging an under-participator to share their ideas or encouraging an over-participator to listen to the ideas of someone else.

Using roles is also a crucial step in scaffolding healthy interactions. It is important to move beyond Kagan roles to Complex Instruction roles—that is, roles that all require thinking and all require sharing. 

For example, a Resource Manager in Kagan roles would retrieve the necessary materials, but they would not be responsible for sharing and analyzing ideas. With Complex Instruction, we have a Resource Manager who is responsible for getting necessary materials, sharing ideas, and discussing the ideas of others. Teachers may feel that assigning roles is restrictive. Since we are adults, we have already internalized ways to collaborate and interact. Our learners need our support to do this, making roles necessary until they become internalized. 

Finally, ensure that the major learning happens while students are in small collaborative teams instead of working individually. When learning happens individually, we do not learn to rely on others, and we do not help/coach others. These are crucial skills for healthy workplaces, and we need to support students in developing them. Small team task-based learning teaches students how to ask for help, look for help (especially if learning is on vertical surfaces), offer help through coaching, actively listening, disagreeing respectfully, coming to consensus instead of compromise, understanding how others approach a task differently, and understanding that learning is a shared endeavor. Teachers can co-develop a rubric that helps students determine whether their team was productive and healthy. 

Periodically, teachers can give teams time to reflect and score themselves as a group, setting goals for their next experience with their next teammates. Inspiring Connections has Team Challenges that underscore the importance of the team, and all CPM curricula strongly encourage team roles and small team task-based learning. 

Bite 4: NOTHING is forever; AKA the freedom of Impermanence

Finally, students have lost a sense of inevitable change. They have begun to define themselves in fixed ways, and these definitions become self-fulfilling prophecies. These fixed ways of thinking steal students’ agency to take ownership of their learning and control of their circumstances. Our classrooms need to continuously and consistently communicate that all of this is impermanent. Students may struggle today, yet feel completely ahead of the class tomorrow. Students may feel alone today, but part of a thriving team tomorrow. Students may feel they failed today, but may succeed tomorrow. Our reality is one of impermanence; it is not fixed or static.

There are a number of ways we can communicate impermanence. 

Using vertical non-permanent surfaces, like whiteboards, is a great way to encourage students to embrace impermanence. They lose the fear of beginning, because if they make a mistake, they can erase it without difficulty. I have heard from teachers who swear by having students use pens in math class. The idea is that teachers can see the errors that students are making. However, the permanence of this tool causes the post-pandemic learner significant anxiety, and anxiety is already at an all-time high with youth. The benefit that pens provide is not worth the resulting math trauma and anxiety. Furthermore, youth begin to embrace the whiteboard as a tool and prefer it for practice, tests, and independent puzzling. More students engaged in more math for longer is a win!

Liljedahl also suggests that teachers randomize teams daily. This is often hard for teachers to make routine, but it is an excellent tool to help youth understand that they can work with many other people, and that even if they struggled with today’s team, they can have a totally different experience tomorrow with a new team. This not only supports the concept of impermanence, but it also reinforces other aspects of healthy socialization.

Lastly, most of us have heard of Growth Mindset by now, whether it is from Jo Boaler’s work or Carol Dweck’s work. We might be less familiar with the Value Mindset, Agency Mindset, and Belonging Mindset, yet these three mindsets all support and develop the Growth Mindset in students. The Center for Recruitment and Retention of Mathematics Teachers at the University of Arizona has translated the four Academic Mindsets—belonging, value, agency, and growth—into mindset messages that are used as a debrief and reflection tool after tasks. 

First, teachers look for ONE academic mindset that was particularly focused on through the task. Then the teacher asks learners to read all of the statements for that mindset to themselves and share the ONE statement that they feel was reinforced for them (personally) in the lesson. 

Learners can choose to share, and others can choose to say, “That’s me, too!”, developing shared experiences around impermanence. A learner may choose, and often does choose, completely different messages from the same mindset for different tasks. Moreover, the learner will be among different peers who chose the same mindset across the year. Students can also huddle in small teams and share why they chose the message they chose, creating connections and socializing in healthy ways while sharing reasons that will change across time. 

All of this may feel rather overwhelming, incorporating all of these ideas into your lessons. It is important to remember how one eats an elephant, even a large one: one bite at a time. Take those things you are already doing or almost doing and tweak them to reach the desired result. Then slowly add in one strategy at a time as you see the need arise with your students. Every bit of effort is helpful and productive, so do not start to say that you “could be” or “should be” doing more. Remember, if we “should” all over ourselves, so will others. Your efforts matter, and each day is a new opportunity to help your learners heal, recover, and rebuild!   

Kearney, C. A., Dupont, R., Fensken, M., & Gonzálvez, C. (2023, August). School attendance problems and absenteeism as early warning signals: Review and implications for health-based protocols and school-based practices. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 8, p. 1253595). Frontiers Media SA.