In response, at the moment’s college leaders don’t have any selection however to view post-COVID as a chance for colleges to redouble their efforts to assist college students. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Wants, a pyramid-shaped mannequin that represents human motivation from a pupil’s most elementary wants (the bottom of the pyramid) to their biggest potential (the pyramid’s peak), affords a helpful framework (Wahome, 2022) (see Determine 1).
Determine 1
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Wants
Physiological Wants. Initially, post-COVID colleges should work more durable than ever to make sure that all college students have the sources and assist they want. Group sources, non-public donations, and grants could be sought to complement college funding for issues like laptops, software program, and scorching spots. Non-perishable meals drives, recent produce markets, and the provision of private hygiene merchandise for college students who want them could be organized by mother or father golf equipment or group teams. Social and public well being companies akin to counseling, mother or father training, dental exams, and flu photographs could be supplied on-site (Workplace of Elementary and Secondary Schooling, 2022).
Security, Safety, and Safety. Making certain college students’ bodily and emotional security runs a detailed second. Publish-COVID colleges should do all they will to guard college students from hurt and hostility, each in-person and in our on-line world. Faculty safety programs, college useful resource officers, background checks, and different security measures should take prime precedence. Faculty amenities should be free of poisons and hazards, pupil habits insurance policies should maintain college students to excessive requirements, and faculty employees members and volunteers ought to obtain annual coaching as mandated reporters of kid abuse and neglect in addition to sex-based discrimination and harassment.
Belongingness and Love. As we speak’s colleges additionally should exit of their approach to facilitate college students’ emotions of belongingness. Faculty colours, mascots, and participation in extracurricular actions present a place to begin, however greater than ever earlier than, post-COVID college students want alternatives to speak, collaborate, and drawback clear up with their friends. Moreover, advisor-advisee packages constructed into the varsity day can foster shut relationships between advisors and small teams of scholars (AMLE, 2022). Mother or father and group volunteers could be recruited to help with homework and tutoring. Partnerships with native church buildings and different civic teams can present college students with constructive position fashions, mentors, and social-emotional assist.
Esteem. Solely after college students’ physiological, security, and belonging wants are met ought to colleges start fascinated by instructing and studying. Publish-COVID is a grand alternative to re-think the standard tutorial construction of colleges. As we speak’s college students would profit from smaller class sizes, two lecturers per classroom, and prolonged tutorial time for studying, math, and writing instruction. As we speak’s college students now not must memorize info; they should perceive ideas. College students now not must be taught remoted details; they should observe the talents wanted to use them. Re-thinking what, why, and the way college students are taught is what lecturers and faculty leaders do finest; and in at the moment’s post-COVID world, doing issues in another way is crucial.
Self-Actualization. As soon as college students attain the height of the Maslow’s Hierarchy pyramid, they’re lastly able to blossom and thrive. However solely with a strong basis of assist and sources beneath them can college students obtain their full potential. To assist college students get there, at the moment’s college leaders should work to develop a post-COVID imaginative and prescient for instructing and studying that not solely helps college students academically but in addition addresses college students’ non-academic and social-emotional wants. As soon as that occurs, my pal’s dialog along with her highschool daughter would possibly sound one thing like this: “It’s not honest!” “What’s not honest?” “Everyone seems to be working so exhausting! They began doing it following COVID, and now it’s a behavior!”
