"A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear. Its' consequences saturate the universe and the goodness that happens somewhere, anywhere, helps in the transfiguration of the ugliness." - Desmond Tutu
Today is World Teachers' Day and I have the immense good fortune to work alongside a crew of the finest educators imaginable - and they are delighted to work every day with your children :)
Today's blog is a testimony to the tremendous investment these teachers are making to ensure your children are receiving the best possible learning experiences in an educational environment none of us have ever experienced or anticipated before...a peek behind the scenes of a school functioning within a tight web of medical and political rules and guidelines unimaginable until the spring of 2020...
Since March 15, 2020 I have witnessed some of the most profound changes in teachers and teaching that I believe have ever occurred. The speed and the magnitude of the changes have been gob-smacking to say the least and have impacted everything from how educators plan, assess and teach to how we let our students into and out of the building, go to the washroom and organize our classrooms. The greatest impact, without a doubt, has been that - in. a heart beat - we are no longer making pedagogical decisions based on best knowledge about teaching and learning and children. We are making pedagogical decisions framed by rules and guidelines that have almost nothing to do with our profession that we have spent years refining, enhancing and continually improving for and with our students.
Our profession completely changed the whole way their work would get done in less time than a weekend. Teaching practices changed entirely - virtually overnight - with purpose, intentionality, deep care and even panache. Teachers didn't just pass the time with children, they taught and supported and kept children attentive to the concept of school when the reality of school abruptly disappeared. As educators, they changed on a dime because of their deep commitment to their clients - the children and families we work with every day.
Nobody said, 'This is too hard! It can't be done! This will never work!" (Well - at least not out loud in my hearing anyway!).
All over the world, people began working from home and this was a tremendous shift in reality for all of us. It was a new reality for sure and the learning curve was enormous as we tried to make sense of a new lifestyle that tied us to our homes and our immediate families while we tried to make sense of work completely digitally.
Teachers began working from home while continuing to teach the children how to work from home, while continuing to sustain relationships, while worrying about assessment and student progress and whether or not the children had access to technology and how to foster relationships and care for each other even when we only got to see each other through a screen. Plans carefully honed and refined for a full year's instruction were immediately discarded, and as we learned to navigate new digital programs, apps and communication strategies teachers also wrote modified report cards and IPPs, tried to offer as much support as possible to children who required Education Assistants and supports that had disappeared with the beginning of school closures and worried over the impact of six months loss of targeted learning in schools.
We learned to make videos with any kind of digital device, to upload and save, modify and share, create choice boards and meetings and try to assess whether our students were making independent progress in any way. As the initial shock eased, we moved into the 'Superhero' project as a way to continue to engage and nudge our students in learning, in keeping with previous learning adventures at EHS.
Teachers survived and thrived - and they changed as well. A little less lighthearted, a little more worried, somewhat less trusting of all the living we had taken for granted forever! Summer came and we all went home, hoping this would all ease in some way by September, worried about our learners and what the gaps in learning might mean for them in the future, unsure what our usually energetic new school year would look and sound like in an increasingly COVID-19 focused world.
When we found out in early August we would be opening with face-to-face, in-school teaching and learning, every teacher I spoke to believed we needed to get the children back in school. Sometimes health concerns overshadowed everything else and life did not stop happening - family illnesses, natural disasters and accidents that shatter homes and security, loss of work - all of these life events continue to colour the lives of our teachers over the summer, just as it did our school families. As we gathered in August to begin establishing completely foreign routines and strategies for safe-as-possible-entry to school, the full impact of the rules and regulations we would be functioning within began to take shape, shocking all of us in the enormity of the impact.
Since September, teachers have re-organized class lists completely to accommodate families within designated cohorts. They have re-organized classroom configurations two or three times, depending on the latest regulations from either AHS or CBE as well as the perceptions and expectations of our families. Teachers are gathering information about their students as learners from parents, and in the relationships they are gradually re-establishing with the children. They are planning lessons that are aligned with previous work but are still vastly different - activities for learning that require collaboration, interaction or close contact are simply not possible anymore and we are drawing on solitary, independent learning activities that we know, pedagogically, do not necessarily foster the best possible learning opportunities for active children. Learning is happening at a much slower pace than previously, for just about every child. Supports are not available in the same way and it is much more challenging to encourage students to explore their ideas, investigate problems, analyze and synthesize with reduced communication and sharing of ideas. Assessment takes longer too - observations that used to occur while children worked in groups now need to be managed individually. There are fewer teachers and more students assigned to each teacher. Planning and preparing for instruction is much more challenging with significantly more constraints as we strive to keep children in seats, at tables, in cohorts, not touching each other or each other's things, wearing masks, keeping distances, washing and sanitizing their hands and drinking water to hydrate - all before we teach a single new idea or concept or practice a new skill. And, quite frankly, we really miss our volunteers!!
The challenges are enormous, daily, frustrating and limiting. There is no other way to describe them.
But the children! They come every day with smiles and stories and the deep desire to learn. They are willingly adjusting quickly to routines and schedules they could never have imagined, happy to be back in school and together with their teachers and their peers. They ask - sometimes frequently - to do the very things they know will help them learn - work with a partner, stretch out on the floor, stand up and walk around the room and find someone else who has an idea similar to yours, collaborate on ideas or construction of a prototype or just exchange some ideas - and the answer is always the same - not right now, not yet, not today, maybe soon, no, no, no... Yet they don't get discouraged and they don't give up - they know we are protecting each other in this peaceful community as much as we are protecting ourselves. And because the children continue to give everything their best efforts, teachers are inspired, energized, ready to find new ideas and new ways to ensure these children are never disadvantaged from a learning perspective by COVID-19; that the learners in our school continue to thrive and grow every. single. day.
There are tears - frustration causes so many tears! And peals of laughter over the silliest things. Muffled voices that are strained so kids can hear are anxiously awaiting the arrival of new personal microphones for each teacher to try and carry masked voices just a little further when the children are unable to gather for even a story like they once did so joyously and easily. There are groans, sometimes, when yet another change is announced to some small routine we thought we had mastered already. Or another restriction we didn't anticipate. And exhaustion reigns supreme - everything is much harder to achieve and there is not a teacher in the school that will relax on expecting the children will get the best learning experiences possible under the circumstances so everyone is working harder than they ever have and it shows in the eyes we have come to know so well just above the masks. There is exhaustion without a doubt.
And then we meet, as a staff, to talk about energizing the learning and opening up Coulee School again and the ideas just fly! Teachers are energized, enthusiastic, creative and willing to try new things that will enhance student learning experiences. They get a student insight questionnaire back from a parent and are in awe of the great depth of knowledge of the child's learning resident in the words on the page. A parent offers an encouraging word at the end of the day and their eyes light up as they smile behind the mask.
The world of teaching is not the same - perhaps it never will be. But the teachers bring their joy, their energy and their vision for success to school each day - their game - and unhesitatingly lean into the work of the day. Whether they are in the building or working from home as part of the Hub online learning experience, every teacher is getting up each day determined to make a difference for their students today. Regardless of tears or laughter or frustration or exhaustion. We are in this together and the example we want to set for our learners is 'we've got this - we are going to get through everything successfully with deep care and connection'.
It is World Teachers' Day and I am deeply honoured to work with this small cross-section of teachers of the world, giving their all for our children each and every day. Behind the scenes, we are not the educators we studied and planned and worked so hard to be - we are the educators who rise to the occasion, bring the best we've got to a terribly tangled game and always, always help our children believe they are simply the most awesome of all people!
It is a gift to be a part of Eric Harvie School and I am grateful to work with such dedicated and talented educators:)
Lorraine Kinsman
Principal
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