"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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