"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts." - C. S. Lewis
"Dear Tired Teacher: When the expectations begin to feel impossible, remember because of you...today someone smiled, made a connection, become more confident and felt loved." - Marie Wallace
Friday, October 9, 2020 was a professional development day for our school. Teachers came together eagerly (appropriately socially distanced and masked, of course, with sanitizer and wipes close at hand) to explore new ideas together for our Coulee School outdoor learning project this school year. We also worked to align our teaching and learning school-wide with the scope and sequence recently outlined by our school board to keep both the online and in-person learners relatively correlated during this pandemic school year. There was energy, enthusiasm, creativity and innovation everywhere in our gym as we brainstormed, captured ideas, consulted programs of study and sought to take school outside as a healthy place of learning.
There was also a noticeable sense of exhaustion in the room - teachers looked tired, yawned unexpectedly and apologized, moved a bit more slowly than usual as we filled in charts and sketch boards with our ideas.
Six weeks into this profoundly different school year and exhaustion - physical, mental, emotional - is clearly visible even as teachers push forward with new ideas, seeking to find ways to continue to make learning engaging, interactive and applicable for their students. Why?
Vigilance is exhausting!!
That, really, is the crux of the whole school experience just now, in my opinion, at least for teachers and school staff. Vigilance is not a choice - not even for a minute - we are doing our utmost to ensure none of the children become ill through the course of a school day and there are no intermissions. When a child does exhibit symptoms of sickness, our vigilance increases as we strive to meet that child's needs while doubling down on our watch to ensure no one else becomes sick too. Every decision we make - academic or otherwise - is coloured and impacted by this great and tremendous need for vigilance.
Schools have always been active, busy, interactive and creative - most teachers and students feel like the days fly by (at least in elementary classrooms and usually at EHS!) in a whirl of activity, conversation, reading, writing, problem solving, creating and adjusting our thinking.
And schools remain busy places - just moving 400+ children in and out of the building affords a continual sense of busy-ness for sure!
However, there are no movements of children in schools today that are not planned, orchestrated and supervised carefully - the carefree flexibility schools have always enjoyed during the 'non-instructional' moments have disappeared along with spontaneous decision making, collaboration and perpetual conversation that typically peppers classroom learning. We are all vigilant in ensuring movements are distanced, masked and sanitized without fail. It requires persistent vigilance and a high level of respect for COVID-19 to survive each school day successfully amidst carefully choreographed student movements.
The children have risen to the occasion in ways I would have hardly believed possible before the pandemic - committing, to the best of their abilities, to changes in routine, flexibility and learning possibilities. While they are accepting of every difference, it is the teachers who are charged with the responsibilities of ensuring the fidelity of cohorts all the time every day, or that physical distancing is always a factor in every student interaction and learning situation. How we meet students' learning needs are not necessarily determined by the nature of those needs, but more likely by the location of the class in the school and who else is in the classroom cohort.
Every action in a school by a child is shaped, informed and facilitated by many teacher decisions. From the second a child enters the school yard in the morning to the time exit occurs at the end of the school day, virtually every movement has been pre-considered by teachers through this pandemic to hold physical distancing, sanitizing and mask-wearing at the forefront as a gateway to student safety. And every action requires a teacher to consider how to best hold students responsible for sustaining directives and suggestions for school developed by Alberta Health Services or the Calgary Board of Education. These directives change quite frequently and every small adjustment generates another change in routines teachers will need to tweak, teach, implement and monitor.
In all fairness, these are the very lifeblood of teaching, the small decisions and management strategies that impact the quality of every teaching day. It's just that the pandemic has elevated the impact of our decisions as well as the number of decisions that must be adjusted immediately and then followed strictly in every given day. It has also meant making decisions from a safety perspective rather than a pedagogicial perspective - and that is not always our comfort zone. Often we find ourselves considering a new boundary through the lens of a particular age level, trying to make sense of a very adult-based regulation from a very different level of understanding.
A few days ago, I was talking to a 7-year-old, trying to help this child make sense of staying in one place for pretty much the whole day. This was a concept that just exceeded understanding for this little one. Having been a student at EHS for two years already, the background experiences for this student were of flexible learning where it needed to happen - easy access to the learning commons book collection, for example, or to gather around a learning table with peers to plan a story together with shared loose parts and every participant contributing ideas to be considered before they made the decision they were each ready to begin writing a story that contained some of the shared imaginings mixed and gathered from all the conversations. Additionally, this child had been away from school for six months, primarily at home with family or close relatives and friends, with limited boundaries in terms of where one could walk, sit, stand, visit with others for a brief conversation or touch books, technology, etc without worrying about sanitizing before and after touching an object. For the wee person I was having this conversation with, the world had gone tilt and, despite being reminded many times a day of new expectations and routines, frustration had reached an overload point.
As I talked about the corona virus as a 'big sickness' and how in peaceful communities we help keep each other safe all the time, I realized these were not the ideas creating the challenge for this child to understand. The rebellion wasn't against helping others or keeping the sickness away as long as possible; it was against restrictions that made no sense in a place were freedom to learn has been the great attraction. And I thought, "I feel the same way! None of this makes sense and I want my own freedom to move around and talk back, too - as much or more than I want it for the students!"
And then the adult/principal/teacher part of me was made visible again, and the need for vigilance, for continued restrictions, continued cohorts, continued physical distancing and concentration on routines once again took top spot for my attention. I acknowledged with my friend that none of these routines and rules and expectations are fair but they are necessary if we are going to continue taking care of each other. Eventually, begrudgingly we reached agreement on the fact we do have a responsibility to take care of each other even when it isn't fun. We have to stay vigilant. And we both went back to work - I wouldn't say happily back to work for either of us, but we both went back to work!
As I watch children enter school using sanitizers, standing on 2m apart Xs or using their hula hoops to remind them to distance, wearing masks as willingly as they wear socks, I marvel at their willingness to just 'do it' and carry on - the resiliency of children. I also marvel at the vigilance of their teachers and support staff who every day carry out myriad acts of pandemic protective care we didn't even know existed less than eight months ago. Every classroom entry and exit, every transition to a different subject during class time where resources must change or to the Music Room or outside for PE, every coulee or community walk, every lunch time experience or body break on the playground, signing up for Google Classrooms in the event we are directed to Scenario 2 or 3 or there is a positive test in our school that leads to a class closure for 10 to 14 days, or learning to browse the school library digitally to request books to borrow, even just hanging up coats and storing boots in classrooms rather than hallways - all these small decisions require countless hours and minutes of discussion and planning to enact safely and according to pandemic guidelines.
Teachers typically make about 1500 decisions in a regular school day - that is what we are trained to do and most of us do this without even realizing all these decisions happen at all! Right now, teachers are making approximately three times as many decisions in a day with the added expectations around movement, sanitizing, wearing masks, constraining cohort fidelities, tracking seating arrangements, scheduling outdoor and indoor breaks to minimize contact in the hallways, monitoring bathroom breaks to reduce contact between students in washrooms, ensuring students stay in their assigned seating spots and only navigate the classroom by way of taped 'alleys', monitor students are following directional signs in hallways or monitoring transitions to lunchroom, Music or PE for appropriate physical distancing, mask wearing and hand washing outside of classrooms.
This is all before any teacher makes a decision about supporting and developing engaging teaching and learning activities or modifying them to meet student learning needs after a six month 'break' from typical school experiences.
It is no wonder exhaustion is so prevalent - vigilance is a significant cause of exhaustion and teachers are nothing if not vigilant these days...
I have a strong and deep faith this too shall pass, the vigilance will diminish, engaging in learning will become a much more flexible experience and all of us will breathe more easily in the not too distant future. And sleep will definitely come easily for all of us!
Lorraine Kinsman
Principal
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