The Cognitive Load of the Unexpected

Like many of you, I’m watching the news of current geopolitics with concern and heartbreak. But for my friends, colleagues, and former students who were part of my life when my family lived in Kuwait, Oman, and the UAE, the news hits far deeper. And my grief runs deep.

For many, this uncertainty may conjure up raw emotions of lockdowns, online learning, or shelter-in-place orders during the early days of COVID.

“Here we go again,” you might be thinking, as families try to create homeschools and teachers try to rebuild systems overnight.

And though remote learning protects our physical safety, the cognitive load for everyone is immeasurable.

Students at home are:

• Managing uncertainty.

• Hearing or seeing news they cannot understand.

• Missing their bus friends, lunch tables, and after-school identities.

• Learning through screens requires more focus and self-regulation.

  
  

Teachers at home are:

• Managing uncertainty.

• Translating lessons into digital formats.

• Monitoring engagement through tiny rectangles.

• Carrying emotional weight while redesigning instruction.

  
  

Online learning is not neutral. It demands more executive functioning, more clarity, more preparation, and more emotional energy.

I speak to you from the past. Digging through my own emotional memory, I choose to bring forward the joy my teams found in the darkest of days — when we didn’t retreat into the doom of the silo, but into the glow of the community.

It is time for all of you to lean into the learning community.

Divide the Work. Lighten the Load.

If someone on your team is confident teaching math online, let them teach it to the entire grade-level community.

If another teacher shines during read-aloud and comprehension, let them own that block.

If someone is calm and steady in leading reflection, let them host the closing circle.

“Divide and conquer” (though probably the wrong turn of phrase during this time) is not about doing less. It’s about doing what you do best — and letting your team carry the rest.

In uncertain times, collaboration is not an extra. It is the stabilizing structure.

Protect Connection Intentionally

Students are not only missing their homeroom friends. They’re missing their grade-level community, their bus group, and their after-school activity friendships.

Community doesn’t automatically translate online. It must be designed.

Below are quick, low-prep ways elementary learning communities can preserve connection while sharing the work.

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Quick & Easy Community Structures for Remote Learning [download infographic]

1. Whole-Grade Weekly Gathering

Kick off next week or wrap up this week together. Celebrate. Play a quick game. End with a shared ritual. Be together to find the joy.

2. Rotate the Host

Hold a community closing circle each day with a different teacher at the helm (the rest of you monitor the chat and let students “in the door”). Utilize simple prompts, a consistent structure, and low-prep activities to find joy.

3. Teach to the Strength

One teacher teaches math to the full grade. Another leads a writing lesson. Another can run a small-group intervention. Play to each other’s strengths. Reduce duplication. Save your mental energy.

4. Cross-Class Learning Pods

Mix students across homerooms for projects or discussions. Keep groups consistent for a few weeks.

5. Purely Fun Sessions

Hearing the students laugh will, I’m sure, lower your blood pressure. Run an afternoon of fun sessions. Teach a magic trick class. Play Pictionary. Host a dance party. Invite the principal in to teach students how to make a parfait.

Joy is not extra. It regulates the nervous system.

6. Bus Route or Micro-Community Meetups

This one may be great for the larger community or just for your after-school activity group. Try to recreate the small social groups students miss. You know you miss them too.

7. Invite the “Extra Adults”

There are adults who are missing contact time with students — the support teacher or counselor who is missing the hallway check-ins. Your team’s instructional coach or vice principal needs kid time too. Invite them to pop in to greet and connect.

8. Shared Creative Board

Connection doesn’t have to be synchronous. Create a Padlet or slide deck where students post: art, photos, a picture of their pet, jokes, or the slippers they wear to online school.

I’ve also reattached my ideas for students from when we first went online in 2019. [download graphic]

9. Daily Reflection Ritual

Relieve some pressure and create a ritual: same closing phrase, same question format, same visual slide. Find something that you can all hang on to. Predictability builds safety.

10. Small Acts of Service

Many of you — and the world watching from afar — are feeling incredibly helpless right now. Small acts of service can help reduce that feeling: digital thank-you notes, encouragement videos, kindness challenges. Give students agency through acts of service.

We cannot control what is happening around us.

But we can control how we respond within our walls — even virtual ones.

Our students may forget the platforms. They may forget the assignments. But they will remember how it felt.

They will remember that their teachers stayed connected. That their community did not disappear. That someone showed up.

When the world feels uncertain, collaboration becomes more than efficient — it becomes protective.

Lean into your team.

Share the work. 

Protect connection.

Sometimes, that is the most powerful thing we can do.

Note: This post was edited with AI as an assistant to help refine my structure and readability. My voice and words remain intact.