By Charles Sosnik
Each Thanksgiving I write a piece about gratitude for the education community. This year, amid COVID-19, remote learning, and the upheaval of working from home, I find myself more grateful and more optimistic than I have been in decades. After 60 years of ups and downs, that feeling of optimism is striking.
If you have your health…
For the past nine months I have lived cautiously, avoiding travel and social visits and relying on delivery services for essentials. I have underlying health issues and I follow the news closely, which can fuel anxiety. I know how serious a coronavirus infection can be: a close friend, healthy and in his forties, was hospitalized in March and endured severe complications. That experience made me keenly aware of the risks.
And yet, despite the daily headlines and rising case numbers, I remain healthy. The people closest to me are too: my partner Kristina, my youngest son Aidan—who is having an unusually healthy year—and my sons Stone and Gage, each facing their own exposure risks but staying well so far. I don’t take that for granted. In a year defined by illness, protecting our health has become the foundation of gratitude for me.
It’s the Work that Gets Me Through
For the last 13 years, I’ve dedicated my career to education. It’s more than a job; it’s the work that shapes my days and gives meaning to my life. I came to education after 27 years in the media—as a writer, editor, publisher, and producer I thought I had seen and done it all. When I sold my publishing business at 47, retirement looked tempting at first, but I soon realized I needed more than leisure to stay engaged.
Taking a role as editor of a regional education magazine changed everything. Conversations with teachers, superintendents, and education entrepreneurs revealed a shared passion that was contagious. Their dedication turned my interest into a calling. What had been a successful media career became, in hindsight, preparation for this work. In education I felt I was doing something that truly matters—helping to improve lives and learning outcomes. That sense of purpose sustains me through the stress of a pandemic and the challenges of remote learning and hybrid classrooms.
Change Is Gonna Come
One source of gratitude this year is the momentum for change in education. The pandemic has accelerated shifts that many of us have urged for years: more flexible learning models, deeper integration of technology, and renewed focus on equity and access. Longstanding obstacles that once seemed immovable are now receiving attention because educators, families, and policymakers have been forced to innovate.
Change of this scale is rarely easy, but crisis can create opportunity. The rapid adoption of remote learning tools, new approaches to student engagement, and stronger collaboration across districts suggest that many improvements will outlast the pandemic. While some challenges remain—digital divides, learning loss, and teacher support—there is a real possibility that these difficult months will spur lasting, positive reform. For that potential, I am grateful.
About the author
Charles Sosnik is an education journalist and editor and serves as Editor in Chief at the Learning Counsel. An EP3 Education Fellow, he draws on deep connections within the education community to add context to conversations about teaching, learning, and technology. Charles writes regularly for publications influential in the education space and sees his role as using journalism to support better outcomes for students and educators. Proudly Southern, he often says he is an editor by trade and Southern by the grace of God.