In Celebration of Resilient Kids!

"When our emotions are in check and we can prevent stressors from taking us off course, we are better able to tap into our frontal lobe, the region of the brain that powers executive functioning skills. When we achieve self-regulation, all of our cognitive resources are directed here. When we are agitated, stressed or otherwise unregulated (the norm during these times), the frontal lobe can't engage effectively. Instead the brainstem - the reactive part of the brain that puts us in fight, flight or freeze mode - is activated. We see this in action when children struggle to listen or focus. When it looks like they are ignoring our directions or actively resisting, chances are that they're actually not in the correct "headspace" to comply. In other words, they are dysregulated and cognitively in fight, flight or freeze mode..."  - Elizabeth Sauter & Rebecca Branstetter

It has been the most challenging September of my life - and I know I am not alone when I write these words - this has been, more than likely, the most challenging September in most of our lives!

 

Just for the record, I have had many challenging Septembers - two of them were spent opening new schools (one - ours - without a finished building).  I also spent one September starting a brand new administrative position that coincided with the death of a close family member - whose young child our family soon adopted - just four days before school began; a life adventure that also included emptying and preparing their family home for sale by the end of that same month. I think it would be safe to say challenging Septembers are a phenomenon with which I have had more than a passing relationship - and yet I remain quite confident this has been the most challenging September ever. Full stop. Ever.

Preparing the school for a successful re-entry has been a story of shifting sands and a staggering amount of information that seemed to require processing all at once. It has also meant working closely with staff to develop an unbelievable set of routines and expectations that superseded even the most rule-bound experiences of school any of us, ourselves, had ever experienced. 

Re-organizing the spaces in the school numerous times over the past thirty days, we have attempted to meet both safety expectations for physical distancing with student numbers that did not correlate well with those expectations, as well as accommodate a vision of the use of physical space that did not correspond with the concrete, physical aspects of our learning environment. 

As adult educators, we found ourselves stepping away from pedagogical understandings and beliefs we know constitute best possible learning opportunities in favour of the safest possible learning spaces for all children and staff.  

Sometimes it seemed like yesterday's firm decision was the first one abandoned today.

Pressures and concerns from all stakeholders informed our discussions, our decisions and our actions - most times, the concerns we were trying to honour and acknowledge as we made these decisions were at odds with each other, yet equally important to each stakeholder expressing those concerns. Not least among the pressures were the concerns that accompanied announcements of positive cases in other schools and the resultant elevations of anxiety for all of us - families and staff - that corresponded with those announcements. 

Learning seemed to take a back seat every day to implementing and practicing new safety measures, re-organizing to meet varied expectations, or re-aligning to accommodate changes in student population or online learning situations, or any number of other unexpected delays and adjustments. 

Exhaustion and uncertainty have flavoured almost every day. It has only lasted 27 days so far - it is not even over yet - and I am finding it hard to remember who I was before it began - what were the plans we had anticipated with excitement just a few short weeks ago? What were my beliefs as an educator about best possible teaching and learning before the pandemic seemed to melt them all away?

To paraphrase my dad, it was a 'jim-dandy boondoggle' of a month, all told.

Yet - we all showed up.  Every day. Together.

We worked through the toughest days and adjusted our sails. Moved furniture, rearranged spaces, redeployed staff, changed procedures, provoked each other to think differently and then more differently again. 

I have never appreciated teachers and support staff more in a +30 year career than I have this September - their strength, determination, willingness to shift their thinking and try something new in a heartbeat, their absolute commitment to children, safety and learning despite everything - this has been a most amazing gift of this incredibly challenging month. 

And I have been absolutely flabbergasted by the resiliency of the children. We may be working on their behalf, but they have risen to the occasion with such calm, responsible, generous spirits that it would be impossible not to stand in awe of these small humans every minute of every day.

The pandemic has dramatically altered their lives in so many small and enormously large ways. I feel like it has been the most challenging September ever - but I have lived a great many Septembers and, from those experiences, have somehow developed skills and strategies that (I hope) assisted me to somewhat successfully navigate the month. 

Our children have not lived very many Septembers at all - their reserves of experiences and responses to challenges are miniscule at best. 

Yet - they show up every day too. 

They trust the adults in their lives. 

They laugh and smile and follow rules they have never encountered before with grace and charm. And joy- such joy!

They came to school and put on masks, picked up hula hoops and learned to stand in 'X marks the spot' lines. To stop and sanitize or wash their hands many times a day. They wiggle and squirm and ask for different seating because they are used to learning with bodies that move - yet fully comply with every request to 'stay seated, don't cross the line, follow the taped alleyway in the class, don't touch your friend, don't crowd at the washroom, wear your mask, sanitize, sanitize, sanitize..'  

There are more 'don'ts' in school than I have ever encountered in a lifetime spent in education yet our children are taking them all in stride. And learning at the same time, putting tremendous effort into both learning and being safe. Never giving up or refusing and never being upset when they forget and have to be redirected. 

Our children are the rockstars of the pandemic. Full stop - just ROCKSTARS!!

They are so resilient, so purposeful, so willing to keep their friends, family and the world safe. 

They are our superheroes and I stand in awe of every one of them. 

September 2020 has been one very long, very tough month. Our children are much tougher! 

They wear their masks and keep talking, laughing, asking questions like masks are the most normal thing in the world. They use their hoops to play as well as a reminder to distance. They line up 2 meters apart like they've been doing it since birth. They enter a room and look around to notice where the arrows go, how far away their friends are, where is the sanitizer as naturally as they used to hug each other. They are assimilating a zillion new pieces of information into their understanding of 'school' and carrying on with their days as if they have always attended school-in-a-pandemic way. 

They are learning and excited to be here and that joy is absolutely irresistible!! 

The children make all of us want to be in school too - despite all the challenges we are struggling to accommodate ourselves - so we can help make this a wonderful year of learning for them!  The children deserve no less - they are giving this school year their all, just like they always do. COVID-19 for the students is an inconvenience but it is not interrupting their schooling - they are happy to be here and they share that happiness every day.

Sometimes they get anxious, sometimes they are afraid. Often they get annoyed by the restrictions imposed in their learning spaces or their play spaces. Yet they don't give up. They persevere, adjust, comply and shrug off what must seem like an unbelievable shift in their reality.

There is one great celebration I am going to take away from this most challenging September of my life: 

The Kids are Going to be Okay. Full stop.  

Their resilience is clearly on display and that is the greatest celebration of all!

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School

(P.S. I am looking forward to a much gentler October :) 

 

Parent Partnerships are More Important Than Ever Before

 

"The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought devastation across the globe, but it has also demonstrated the best of humanity: Billions of people have taken measures to slow the spread of the virus, protect the most vulnerable members of society, and ensure that those who need medical care are able to access it. The pandemic has shown, that in a crisis, we are perfectly capable of acting selflessly. We understand the value of working together and the power we can have when we do so successfully."                                            - Dr. Robin Bell

One of the most important lessons I learned as a brand new teacher was the value of parent partnerships. By the time I became a teacher, I was already a parent of school-aged children and I knew how much I valued teachers connecting with me whenever one of my children needed a nudge or a reminder, or their class needed a volunteer for a field trip or in-school event. I loved the feeling of being linked to my children's hours spent in school and of being aware of what was going on during their time away from home. When I became a teacher, most of the volunteer activities had to be set aside since I was now spending the day time hours in my own classroom with other people's children, so I volunteered for the School Council instead. And, as a teacher, it did not take me long to figure out that building partnerships with parents helped me both in the classroom and with a myriad of student-centered issues - everything from lost forms to incomplete homework to bake sales!

It has been over thirty years since I was a brand new teacher - although the nature of parent partnerships has changed somewhat over the years, their value has not. Fundraising has taken on greater importance over the years and parents have been invaluable in supporting these efforts. Support for field trips and as school volunteers continue to be key and we have so appreciated the support of our parents in these important areas through the first four years of our school being open!

This school year parent partnerships with the school have taken on a whole new level of importance that cannot be emphasized enough, however.  We will need to work together as the children re-gather in school to assess and support learning that was interrupted for almost six months from what would normally be expected - with parent help, we will be able to create deep understandings of what our students have been able to accomplish over the six months when we did not see them, as well as what their challenges were. This will help all of us to ensure students experience their own, personalized next best steps in learning in the coming months of the 2020-21 school year.

Parents will also need to be our partners as we potentially move in and out of a blended learning environment. Should we move to a Scenario 2 or 3 organization, or should your child be home sick or quarantined for an extended period of time, we will have temporary online learning opportunities available for them through Google Classroom and Google Meets. Our Hub online learning students are already exercising the power of parent partnerships as they move into a completely online learning environment. Blended learning - a mix of in-class and virtual - will be available for anyone who is not well enough to attend school by September 27, 2020. This means every student will have the opportunity to continue to grow in learning regardless of what this crazy year offers in terms of health, exposure to COVID-19 or even an influenza outbreak. Should we need to move from a face-to-face to an online environment - as a whole school or just as a family - this will require a strong partnership between school and parents to ensure students continue to grow in learning.

We have taken a strong stance as a school towards building independence with students focused on using the 'healthy triad' of pandemic health practices.  This is another area where a strong partnership with parents will help children build their independence with practicing appropriate handwashing and sanitizing, maintaining an appropriate physical distance and wearing masks when distance cannot be sustained. We have developed posters and bookmarks as reminders for the students, and are creating in-house video shorts to demonstrate appropriate, safe pandemic practices. When parents support us by encouraging children to build these healthy skills at home as well, students quickly move to employing strong, independent pandemic health routines.

Another key parent partnership we would like to promote is role-modeling the pandemic health routines everywhere, everyday, as well as practicing them at home.  As we try to help students develop greater awareness of what physical distancing is, when we should wear masks and to wash our hands in a particular way for at least 25 seconds, we know students are watching to see if we, their teachers, are practicing these strategies as well. Although this is still a new experience for us, staff are all trying hard to be strong role models of these three pandemic health routines every day to help our students appreciate the importance of following these practices and developing strong, consistent pandemic healthy habits themselves.  We really appreciate seeing parents employ these practices to demonstrate and role model for their children what 'keeping each other safe' really looks and sounds like. 

We know parents are our strongest partners and we are all in this together, walking each other home through this extraordinary and truly bizarre time in history. As Dr. Deena Hinshaw says, "If we all keep washing our hands, staying home when sick and taking all the other small but crucial measures to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, we can and will come through this together."  Whether we are sharing information about student learning, supporting learners in a blended environment, encouraging students to practice the 'healthy triad' successfully and independently every day or demonstrating to our children the importance of consistently demonstrating these behaviours through role modeling, our partnerships with parents will carry us strongly into the healthy future we are all looking forward to with the greatest anticipation!

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School 

Developing Scaffolds for Successful Learning this School Year

 

"Children must be emotionally regulated before they can learn to read or write or do math...we can't punish a child out of trauma...we have to be emotionally regulated ourselves and sit calmly through their emotional re-regulation process before we can move to learning."  - Dr. Jody Carrington

"We are no longer educating learners for a stable and predictable world. The future will belong to those who are adaptable and able to apply (transfer) their learning to new situations. The future requires deep learning." - Harvey Silver & Jay McTighe

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Our first two weeks of school have been heavily focused on establishing routines and strategies, with all our students, related to handwashing/sanitizing, physical distancing and appropriate wearing of masks. These experiences have included merging strange, new expectations associated with these three health safety measures into everyday school routines such as working in classrooms, going to the washroom, eating lunch, participating in Phys. Ed. and Music classes, outdoor body breaks and recess, as well as entering and exiting the school.  There is no aspect of 'being in school' that looks or sounds much like what the 'being in school' experience was like prior to March, 2020.  These are routines we will continue to practice many, many more times as we integrate these new strategies into our everyday learning experiences.

Scaffolding these experiences into our teaching and learning is not anything we have had experience with before - these are new ways of doing and being for teachers and staff as much as they are for our students. We are still trying new strategies and approaches as we make sense of this new 'schooling' that is heavily influenced by health safety measures, and we are challenged to make sense of these new ways of being in school every day - even as we hold great care and attention to every detail. 

This is, for certain, the new story of 'school' we are writing this school year.  

Nonetheless, we are fully aware of the authentic work we are all here to do - to support all our students in being as successful as possible in learning. Every staff member is working hard to find the best possible ways to merge these new safety measures with effective, worthwhile and intentional learning for each and every child. This means we will also be writing different learning stories as well for 2020-21. 

What parents will notice...

• Perhaps the most significant thing parents are most likely to notice is that we are continually monitoring our health safety measures to ensure they are as effective as possible - and this means we are most likely to continue making small adjustments to how we are managing entries/exits, the office protocols, communicating with parents about students, classroom organization, etc. We will do our best to keep parents in the loop as currently as possible when we find we need to adjust school management strategies. 

• Parents have been their children's teachers for the past six months.  Particularly for the first few weeks of school, our goal is to develop as full an understanding as possible of the learning needs, strengths and challenges of each of our students. We will be looking to parents to offer us their insights into their children's learning over the past six months. To achieve this, parents will be receiving a student insight questionnaire the week of September 21 - 25, inviting them to share any pertinent information about student learning and return to classroom teachers. This will be most helpful in ensuring we have complete understandings of students' learning needs.

• Due to COVID-19 restrictions on having people in our building who are not students or staff, we will not be able to host our usual Open House events the third week in September. Instead, there will be a series of virtual Open House opportunities offered to parents on September 24, 2020. Registration for these virtual events will open up at 7:00 am on Saturday, September 19, 2020 through CBE Messenger. Part of the virtual Open House will relate to whole school information sharing with Mrs. Kinsman and Mr. Strand, and part will connect parents and students with teachers for specific classroom information. We are not in a position yet to host student sharing conferences, given the constraints of not having worked with the students for six months and the slow progress towards getting to know our learners we are making as we also integrate significant practices of health safety routines into every day. We appreciate parents' sharing information about students' experiences as learners this school year, and we invite parents to capture their understandings of their children on the student insight questionnaires. 

• With the significant restrictions on student movement and flexible student engagements, including field trips and artist in residency experiences as well as student inquiries we would typically encourage students to pursue, parents will find there are constraints on active learning, collaboration, investigations and creative pursuits we typically would champion in our school, as well as the numerous Student Led Learning Walks and other Celebrations of Learning when we would typically welcome parents to the school to share in their child's learning successes.  The prospect of students either returning to in-school learning from Hub learning for February 1, or possibly the opposite as well, also creates significant boundaries around the usual flexible learning provocations and actions teachers would usually encourage for student learning. Parents will find learning topics and actions are less diverse in nature, while still deeply engaging for students, as they practice, develop and polish their skills, understandings and practical applications of new knowledge.

• As the school year progresses, we are planning to try and build in as many 'school-like' experiences for our children as possible - including Coulee School, community walks, outdoor learning,  virtual Peace Assemblies to showcase student learning and a host of other familiar experiences that will, we believe, appeal to the children as comfortable and engaging practices they are well-acquainted with and welcome with their usual joy and anticipation. 

• There will be many 'differences' this school year as we move forward in the coming months. We are building strong scaffolds for students and parents, seeking to stay connected as educators and parents as we support students in developing their best possible learnings within the current constraints and challenges. We have a highly innovative, creative and motivated school staff and we are confident we will be able to support and elevate student learning regardless of the external impacts on our learning environment.

Completely aside from the COVID-19 challenges, we are ready and excited to engage in the best possible learning experiences with your children in the 2020-21 school year!  We are becoming re-acquainted with your children, astonished by their growth and maturity after six months without seeing them. Spending our days informally assessing where they are academically, gathering information from parents as their most recent teachers, and beginning to build profiles of students' academic strengths and challenges will occupy most of our learning time during the first six weeks of school and inform our next steps for learners. Simultaneously, teachers and staff will be developing personalized, active learning strategies for each child that will nudge their growth as learners towards a highly successful year of learning.

So...we have constraints; we are developing scaffolds. Yes, this school year will be different, yet remain a highly positive year of learning for all students as we look forward - hopefully past COVID-19 - and intentionally position our learners towards a well-supported, successful year of intentional, thoughtful learning. 

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School 

Celebrating the Strengths of Parent-School Partnerships

 

"My dad used to say 'you can't adjust the wind, but you can adjust your sails'. I don't know if he got that from the quote above or if this quote reflects some sort of oceanside folkloric saying that has been around for generations in my native Nova Scotia, but it has certainly been a saying that has stuck with me through the years - it has hung on my office wall or been visible in my school for at least 10 years, although I have been repeating it to myself and aloud since I was a child. Never has it seemed more relevant than in this school year 2020-21."  

I have always valued the strengths of the parent-school partnerships, both as a parent and as an educator - I believe it takes a village to raise a child and I have completely relied on the combined support of families and schools through many storms and sunny times for almost four decades. I have celebrated schools and teachers as we worked together to raise voracious readers, built school communities on kindness and acts of care, organized fundraisers to construct almost a dozen playgrounds as both a parent and an educator, engaged in so many art, community and school projects I've lost count.  I have never, however, witnessed a time when the parent-school partnership required greater strength than it does right now, in 2020-21, in the midst of a global pandemic and return to school. 

We need each other now more than ever!  

And it is so heartwarming to know we are all committed to helping each other successfully navigate these ever changing winds as we re-define and re-imagine the shores that will help us move confidently with all our children into the future.

As we re-open schools, teachers are trying to make sense of learning when the safety routines threaten to eat up enormous amounts of teaching time and energy - we have never faced classrooms where the well-being of everyone depended so completely on stringently adhering to specific behaviours that are very foreign to ourselves and to young children, sometimes completely incomprehensible within the world of childhood. Everything we know about children and how their bodies and brains develop has got to be scaled back, confined and reframed. 

Children need room to wiggle, roam and explore so their curiosities are engaged and imaginations extended - this is how the world continues to be transformed by new inventions and adventures. 

Children need to talk, dream, reflect, question together to make sense of new ideas and theories.

Children need to smile, touch, hug, play games, laugh out loud and even cry together to build emotional connections and relationships that matter and will sustain them in their own emotional growth.

Children need to share learning, investigate together, build, tear apart and design, throw things and measure the distance they travel, shape clay and playdoh and draw with a multitude of media to help them make sense of a sometimes baffling world.

And, just now, we need to inhibit all of these interactions to keep them safe - to keep all of us safe - and healthy until this pandemic subsides. To do this, we absolutely need each other.

As we embark on this journey of school in the pandemic year 2020-21, we will need to rely on each other for support and for ideas. We are here to help our families make sense of learning in a year where almost 25% of last year's learning was interrupted and how we learn is being shaped by safety rather than by best ways to engage brains and bodies. We need our families to help us support children in understanding the differences between learning and being safe in school, and to help navigate the many, many changes that have been implemented already and will continue to shift and waver as new information lands on our doorsteps. 

We know we are going to need your assistance as we launch blended learning, using both Google classroom and in-class learning so we will be ready for whatever scenario is implemented through the school year.  We know we are going to need your assistance as we move to become a school of both Hub and in-class learners with similar yet different learning needs. We know we are going to need your assistance as reading becomes more digital rather than print based in a world where the beautiful book collections we have gathered are not quite accessible to every learner in the ways we know best meet their needs. We know we are going to need your assistance to make sense of the many times we are in a hurry-up-and-wait situation children will find frustrating as we navigate hallways and outdoor times and not-shared lunch hours, restricted playground times and extremely limited opportunities for whole school celebrations and events.  We know we are going to need your assistance to make this year a year of learning and enjoyment even in the face of numerous and ever-changing 'DON'Ts' that seem to be pervasively invading our previously carefree, modern lives. 

As we embark on this new, uncharted year of learning we invite you to join us in a strong parent-school partnership intended to provide your child with the best possible learning in extremely trying situations. There is nothing 'typical' or 'normal' about our days anymore at school - yet we are all here together, trying to make the year as unforgettable as possible for all the right reasons - to celebrate learning and relationship, caring and kindness. Please help us these first days to practice grace and forgiveness, to avoid judgment and complaint as we help our students learn to adjust their sails even as we are also adjusting ours.

Please help us every day by monitoring your child for health concerns before they come to school. We'll help them stay safe by supporting them with their 'triad' of protective strategies - handwashing, distancing and masking - and the cleanest school possible. 

Please encourage them to talk about the positives of cohorting and working together in small areas - they are learning to organize and manage their materials in a confined space and to visually measure and estimate a distance such as 2 m with their eyes rather than a meter stick. Encourage them to be independent in their choices and an advocate for themselves when they realize they have not made the best choice for seating for a particular activity. We will continue to offer them options and possibilities for learning within a defined seating plan to help support their learning. 

Please encourage them to find kindness and joy in their days that seem stripped of friends and games and all the wonderful connections they are used to making at school. We will continue to try and build in reasonable facsimiles of all of these, knowing that collectively we are all adjusting our sails in significant ways to accommodate this new storm of pandemic restrictions. 

And, perhaps most of all, let's work together to stay hopeful and confident this too shall pass, we will learn new ways to care for ourselves and our planet and all move confidently in partnership into the future.

Looking forward to another amazing year of learning - and adjusting - in partnership with all of our families :)

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School 

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