Integrity in the Days of COVID-19

 "Coming together is a beginning.

Keeping together is progress.

Working together is success.

                                 - Henry Ford

As we move into the third month of in-class learning during these months of pandemic teaching and learning, there are a few things that have become abundantly clear - the vigilance required to sustain a safe and healthy school environment is overwhelmingly exhausting, the children are being astonishingly resilient through everything, there is less time spent learning and more time spent watching and taking precautions, the typical, small celebrations of learning we are so accustomed to sharing with parents have come to a complete and abrupt halt - and we are mourning them, as I am sure parents are as well! COVID-19 cases are increasing steeply every day and we have been informed our school now appears on a 'schools with COVID-19 list' somewhere on the internet. There are many fears and worries and testing has increased for schools and families proportionately with the rumours and questions that abound around the world as the fall surge in corona virus infections continues.

Some days it is very hard to keep our focus on what schools are all about - teaching and learning.

And living through all of this has made me stop and thing about how integrity lives on the landscapes of schools. Or perhaps more accurately, how integrity that usually lives on the landscapes of schools, feels very much like it is ebbing away...

When I looked up the meaning of integrity (trying to confirm in my own mind that what I thought integrity meant was accurate), I discovered these descriptions:

                            Being dependable and following through on commitments

                            Being open and honest when communicating with others

                            Holding yourself accountable 

                            Owning up to your shortcomings

                            Respecting the rights of others

                            Having patience when required

And I realized that coping with COVID-19 restrictions, precautions and the associated changes all of those things have wrought in our school have really impacted our pathways to integrity.  So many of the pedagogical principles we hold dear that underpin our practices and relationships with each other, our families and our students have been set aside through these days, weeks and months of precaution. 

We believe in and espouse the principles of Peace Education - caring for others, welcoming new people warmly, resolving issues with a healthy conversation and empathy - these are principles that are challenging to follow when we must keep our distance. 

We believe in and espouse principles of design thinking and inquiry-based learning - collaboration, innovation and creativity abound when children engage in investigations, problem solving, inventing new solutions, uncovering new findings or trying out new ideas - impossible to foster when we are keeping children apart, fixed to a chair, unable to touch anything communal.

We believe in and espouse literacy across the disciplines and have an extraordinary - and growing - book collection in the learning commons.  Although we have been creative with getting books from our collection shared with students, it is a limited experience at best. Guided reading cannot be organized in terms of what the next best steps in learning to read are for children - groups must be from the same cohort with little regard for learning needs. We've just been given the go ahead to actually engage in guided reading with students and will begin that very soon - up until now, reading support has had to be 1-1 inside a cohort. We have been able to take up reading online - for example with Epic books - which is a perk, for sure. But it does not replace the side-by-side nature of reading and enjoying reading we all know children absolutely need!

We believe in and espouse the principles and practices of outdoor education and Indigenous learning. Finally! One principle we can still adhere to most of the time!!

We believe and espouse open, honest communication at all times with our families, students and staff. If anything, we have frequently been guilty of over-communicating (that would be me, I am afraid!). Yet through this time of a possible positive COVID-19 contact, we have found ourselves limited by knowledge of what happened and the necessity of controlling a very restricted message. It is hard to be open and honest when you don't really know the information people would like you to share - and that shakes the integrity of being an opening communicator to the core.

Here's what I do know about integrity in the days of COVID-19:

        

•  We will keep our commitments to ensuring your children are as well-educated as possible.
• We will keep our commitments to open communication as much as possible in as timely a manner   as possible.
•  We will be accountable for our actions every day in modeling and demonstrating safe, caring behaviours for your children to emulate.
• We will let you know when things are tough and we mess up - we know failure just means we will learn to do things better next time and we are happy to share our learning with all of you.
• We will always respect the rights of our students, families and staff, even when that means we cannot reveal all the details when something happens. We are helping each other through this time of chaos and confusion - that means we take care of each other's wellbeing, reputations and feelings too!
• We will try to exercise and demonstrate patience (very tough for me!!) when things in the world seem to take too long - sometimes I just need to accept that I don't fully understand the process.
• We will offer your children - every one of them - the best possible learning experiences we are able to provide every day, no exceptions.
• We will ask for and honour your partnership in helping students become the best versions of themselves.
• We will carry and honour the principles of peace education as we care for and celebrate each other every day.

There are a hundred more commitments I could make if we were not living so tightly with COVID-19 restrictions - but we are. So I am going to work hard at carrying on through this challenging school year with as much integrity as I am able to muster - and I am going to trust everyone else will too!

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School