How To Help Recover Lost Education Years After Disruption: A Middle School Teacher’s Experience
The fluorescent lights hummed over the crumpled bake sale cookie wrappers on my conference table, and Mia’s mom leaned forward, twisting the lid of her travel coffee mug until her knuckles went pale. “I keep searching for answers,” she said, voice quiet. “Any help with my daughter’s lost education years? We fell so far behind during lockdown, when she missed third and fourth grade. Will she ever catch up?”
I’m a seventh grade English and math teacher, and I’ve had this exact conversation 11 times this school year. Disruption isn’t new—some kids miss months of school for chronic illness, some move between districts three times in two years, some step out to care for a sick family member. But more than ever, parents come to me convinced a gap in school equals a permanent, irreparable hole in their kid’s future.
When Mia joined my class at the start of the year, she’d skip out on reading activities by putting her head down, and she’d draw on her desk until the entire surface was covered in tiny hearts and bracelets. She couldn’t multiply 3 times 7 without counting on her fingers, and reading a three-paragraph passage out loud left her red-faced and silent. Her mom had already tried two tutoring centers, a stack of grade-level workbooks, and even pulling her out of her after-school art class to make time for extra practice. Nothing stuck. Mia just got quieter and more defiant.
The first change I suggested was cutting all extra school work down to 10 minutes a day, max. Not 45, not an hour. 10 minutes. And instead of drilling 10 different skills to get her caught up over night, we pick one core skill a month. This month it’s single-digit multiplication. Instead of pulling out a workbook, we practice it in tiny, unremarkable moments. In class, when we pass out snacks, I ask Mia to count how many apple slices each table gets and multiply it by the number of tables to get the total. For her mom, that means asking Mia to calculate the total cost of three items when they’re grocery shopping, or figure out how many hours until her soccer game starting from when they leave the house. No worksheets, no pressure. If one day they forget, that’s fine. No guilt.
The second small shift I asked for was to stop calling those years “lost” — not in front of Mia, not even when she’s talking to other parents. The phrase itself makes it sound like something that can never be replaced, like the entire time was wasted. Instead, I suggested she say “those years looked a lot different than we planned.” Think about what Mia did learn those two years: she learned how to log into her mom’s work Zoom and keep her little brother quiet so mom could take calls. She learned how to order groceries online when the store was out of their favorite cereal, and how to fix a stuck printer when the internet cut out mid-lesson. Those aren’t the skills on a state test, but they’re problem-solving skills that we can build on. When we started reading texts about things Mia cares about — descriptions of friendship bracelet patterns, reviews of new art markers, rules for the TikTok challenges she likes — she started reading without complaining. Those skills she already had, following step-by-step instructions, figuring out what she needs for a project, translated directly to reading comprehension. We just didn’t see it because we were too busy comparing her to where she “should” be.
The third change was putting art class back on the schedule. A lot of parents figure if a kid is behind, they need to cut fun, social activities to make time for school work. But what most people don’t see is that the biggest gap from missed school years isn’t math facts — it’s the social and emotional stamina to sit in class, participate, and handle frustration that comes from learning something new. Mia had missed two years of recess group projects, lunch line chat, all the tiny stuff that builds that stamina. Piling on extra work after school just drained her, so by first period the next day, she had nothing left. After she got art class back, she started sleeping through the night, and she stopped putting her head down during group work.
Three months in, Mia still isn’t where the state standards say a seventh grader should be. She still gets multiplication wrong sometimes, and she still avoids reading out loud if the text is longer than a few paragraphs. Last week, she had a meltdown after math class because she failed her quiz, and she crumpled the paper up and threw it in the trash. Her mom texted me that night, frustrated, saying it felt like they were going backwards. I texted her back what I tell everyone: recovery isn’t linear. It doesn’t happen in a year, and it doesn’t look like a kid suddenly jumping up to grade level overnight. It looks like Mia raising her hand to read her paragraph about friendship bracelet patterns to the whole class last week, something she never would have done four months ago. It looks like her calculating the tip on their dinner bill last weekend without being asked, and getting it right.
I don’t have a magic fix for interrupted education. Some gaps will take longer to fill than others, and some kids will never follow the exact timeline that schools lay out. What I do know is that the worst thing you can do is turn two years of disruption into a lifetime of guilt and extra work that drains a kid’s joy for learning. Ten minutes a day, building on what they already know, keeping the activities that feed them — right now, that’s working for Mia. We’ll take it one month, one 10-minute practice, one short paragraph at a time. There’s no deadline to catch up.
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