See You in September - Part 2

 

"Students who thrived in the remote environment during the pandemic demonstrated competencies such as critical thinking, creativity, resilience, independence as learners, self-regulation, cognitive flexibility and perseverance. 

These are the attributes that are noted as critical for future employability across industries and geographies."   - (Fullan, Quinn, Drummy & Gardiner, 2020) 

In this final blog entry for the school year 2020-21, I am going to explore elements of academic achievement and school organization through the lens of pandemic implications on the experiences of children, as a strategy for considering learning in our school in the 2021-22 school year. Even as we contemplate possibilities for opening up schools again, there is an inherent layer of anxiety and concern that permeates every consideration, every plan, every decision. 

Academic Achievement 

An interesting element of cohorted and online learning has been that student achievement was impacted negatively for the most part - except for students who were already motivated to work digitally or in solitude, while students were often doing their very best, they were also very isolated and restricted in movements and conversations. Without the 'just in time' guidance of the teacher, there were significant impediments for students to demonstrate their own learning and understanding of new concepts and to receive the support needed to ensure learning was focused and on track.

Data from the Reimagining Education 2020 fall investigation into the global impact of the pandemic revealed that more than 98% of participating students indicated they preferred personalized learning opportunities with a teacher rather than automation. "Personalization is among the most effective means for accelerating academic and cognitive growth," the report noted, explaining further that "students want to be be creative and believe they learn more when they have greater voice and choice and receive personalized feedback."

As we explored the overall achievement of our students at Eric Harvie School through this pandemic year, we were intrigued by many of the findings. Overall, our students' achievement levels did not shift significantly through the 2020-21 school year, likely as a result of the stability of our in-person learning environment overall. 

Students generally achieved a similar success ratio to what we have consistently achieved in our previous four years across most curricular areas, with slight variations downward in applying new thinking in novel situations (an expected outcome of being constrained primarily to the building and to particular classrooms for much of the school year).  Areas where we really focused - like teaching writing - were where students generally demonstrated the greatest overall levels of improvement, while students demonstrated a slight deterioration in social/emotional stability as the year progressed (as expressed through our pre and post wellness school surveys). Since these levels began high (with almost 90% of students expressing feelings of safety and happiness at school in November), declining to approximately 86% in June is noteworthy but not disconcerting. 

The interesting factor for us as teachers results from the more traditional approach we had to take to classroom-based instruction this past school year. With students cohorted closely with each other and their classroom teacher, we were not able to regroup for instruction based on personalized learning needs, nor were we able to offer the same level of personalized supports such as SPARK, Calm, Zones, HeartMath, etc. that we typically offer students to help them learn to self-regulate and be prepared for learning. Children did not work as collaboratively as they usually would, were confined to specific learning spaces and unable to make use of the Learning Commons or Maker Space, for example. While, in a usual school year we would anticipate overall improvement in most curricular areas with respect to whole-school learning achievement, 2020-21 maintained the status-quo in terms of achievement levels for the most part.   

There are many factors at play here - this was the most extraordinary year of teaching and learning any of us have ever experienced and we don't want to read too much into the data we have collected. Instead, we are going to look to the fall as a time where we will re-establish our school goals towards developing a strong learners' toolkit of skills that will support students to wonder, investigate, problem solve, pose questions, represent their thinking and work collaboratively in a peaceful community. 

We are going to focus on student learning - meeting any and all students where they are at, rather than where we might expect them to be as they enter their 'next grade level'.  With students returning to in-school learning from a variety of situations - Hub School, CBE-Learn, Home Schooling, interrupted learning due to extended isolations or quarantines and online learning, as well as possibly entering grade 1 without any Kindergarten experiences, or entering Kindergarten without preschool experiences, we fully appreciate every child is going to be coming to school with a highly varied set of previous learning experiences and levels of achievement. We will be establishing our teaching to reflect these realities.

And, our direct and simple mission for the 2021-22 school year will be to "successfully meet learners where they are and support them to achieve academic success through collaborative teaching and learning opportunities.'  These opportunities will continue to be offered through the lenses of peace education, place-based learning and design thinking, as they always have in our school.  This is not new work to us at EHS; it is more a matter of accommodating small differences to reach the highest potential of every student. 

 "Going forward the learning process must foster these competencies through authentic, relevant learning that provides voice, choice and agency to learners.  This necessitates a new role for teachers; one in which they are activators of learning; practitioners who can differentiate task, time and space to meet student needs and include them as co-designers of that learning."  - (Fullan, Quinn, Drummy & Gardiner, 2020) 

School Organization

There is no doubt the school's organization will be much different in the fall than it was this past pandemic year, and different again from how we were organized previous to the pandemic. Not only has the pandemic shaped our most recent experiences, the budget constraints have also generated a much changed landscape for our school as we anticipate returning to in-person learning in the fall of 2021.

To begin with, we no longer have a Physical Education Specialist to plan and offer our PE program with and for students. This will fall to the classroom teachers as elementary generalists. And our Music program is being re-imagined as a Fine Arts program with greater emphasis on integrating Music into the overall daily learning of every student. While our beloved Music teacher, Mrs. Coulson, will still be with us, her work with students and in classrooms will look and sound much changed from what it has in the past - we are looking forward to this exciting and energizing way of bridging learning through Music, Dram, Art, Dance across all curricular areas as it makes sense for our learners.

The school will be organized differently as well. There will be six grade 3/4 classes, all housed in one hallway (the HOPE hallway), to facilitate greater access to re-grouping and collaborative projects as we strive to personalize and meet the needs of every learner. There will be 3 team teaching teams of Grade 3/4 teachers to facilitate this work. The Grade 1/2 team will also consist of six grade 1/2 classes as well, all housed in the PEACE hallway, for the same reasons. With considerably less support staff, all extra support for learning will need to come from classroom teachers who will be working collaboratively to plan, instruct and support every learner from wherever they are in their learning journey.

We will teach curriculum of course, but most importantly, we will be teaching children through the curriculum to ensure they are able to progress and grow from wherever they are when they arrive at school in September, 2021 to the highest level of achievement they are best able to attain by June of 2022.  And our learning will be designed to support each child as much as possible with a highly reduced number of staff, understanding as we do that deep learning is what ensures children will be able to progress in life successfully.

 "Deep learning experiences are those that produce learning that sticks for life. They are both profoundly personalized and student-centered and are intrinsically motivating for students as they pursue topics that are real interest to them, have authentic meaning, and are more rigorous. These learning experiences make students want to persist and to succeed. 

This combination of autonomy, belonging and meaningful work inspires students. When students are invited to demonstrate their learning differently, and when learning environments include all students as contributors and change agents, they begin to develop a sense of efficacy. 

Relationships and engagement - the gatekeepers of learning - are emphasized in this learner-centered model. Voice, choice, and agency are central to deep learning." (Fullan, Quinn, Drummy & Gardiner, 2020) 

We are excited about the possibilities even during these times of great reduction and change. Education is a changing profession and CBE has a long history of changing successfully to meet the demands of society, of children, of families. As part of the CBE family of schools, Eric Harvie staff look forward to welcoming all our learners on September 1, 2021 for an exciting and much different year of learning experiences!  We are very proud of the work we have accomplished this school year - #CouleeSchool and our beautiful 5th anniversary Mural stand as amazing examples of what we were able to accomplish with our students even during huge pandemic constraints and we know our children will soar next year as well :)

"Education doesn't need to be reformed - it needs to be transformed. the key is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions."  - Sir Ken Robinson 

See you all in September!  Best wishes for a safe and relaxing summer!

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School 

See You in September - Part 1

" 

"Through this disruption, there has been a recognition that schools play a vital role beyond learning. Their custodial and community roles are central to a healthy society."   -   'Education Reimagined: The Future of Learning'   (Fullan, Quinn, Drummy & Gardiner, 2020)

It is the middle of June...

And now our thoughts, deeds and concerns begin to point to September - always the mingling of 'good-bye' with 'Hello!' and a conglomeration of planning, cleaning, organizing, anticipating, re-visioning, sadness and joy. Such is June in a school and, despite the pandemic, this is still true in 2021.

A few years ago, when I had been a principal for just a couple of years, I remember describing the process of closing a school in June, only to re-open in September, as being similar to shutting down a bank in June, closing out all the accounts and changing at least 30% of the staff and sending everyone away on summer vacation. Then re-opening the bank branch on September 1st with some of the same clients, a whole bunch of new ones and everyone opening their accounts even though none of the customers had the same needs as before!  it is a process quite unique to learning institutions and, as I have come to learn over the many years between sharing that description and today, this it is a process that takes several months to execute successfully. Planning for June actually takes the months of April/May/June - at the very least!!

As we look to close out the 2020-21 school year, there are still many pragmatic pieces of information that have not been decided yet for Eric Harvie School - such as the impact of pandemic health and safety procedures - as well as some undefined components like how many students will be returning from home schooling or CBE-Learn online schooling to in-person learning - or vice versa. Slowly, we are beginning to fill in some of these questions with answers but there is still much to be determined for our school before the beginning of September. Class lists, teacher partnerships, use of space, whole school initiatives, professional development, extra-curricular events, parent evenings, etc are all still in the development stages this mid-June. However, the thinking and planning are well underway - there is much thoughtful considering required to open a school year successfully for all students. 

In preparation for the next school year, I have also been reading and researching about potential issues regarding a return to 'before' in schools as we all fervently hope to see the end of the pandemic restrictions we have lived with for about sixteen months begin to recede. Throughout the world, many realizations have emerged from the various closedowns, virtual classroom experiences and the impact of these past months on children globally, including in Canada and in Alberta. I believe the one common experience that has been universal is simply that every child has experienced the pandemic differently - and most of them have experienced an identifiable impact of some kind on their learning, emotional well-being and/or sense of trust in the security of the world. 

Understanding the implications the pandemic experience may have on children is a significant element of effective planning for schools as we contemplate in-person, unrestricted learning once again - what used to be so natural now seems so foreign and strange!  Considerations for our school as we make plans for re-opening as fully as possible in the fall of 2021 include exploring the dynamics of student engagement, emotional well-being of all students, student academic achievement and skill development, and the best possible organization of schools to meet the needs of students coming to class with vastly different learning histories and experiences.  In Part 1 of this two-part blog series, I am going to explore ideas related to student engagement and emotional well-being; next week, in Part 2, I will take a look at academic achievement and school organization - specifically within the lens of EHS. 

Student Engagement

One of the primary areas emerging as a potential concern for educators and parents everywhere is the impact of motivation on student success. This is not an outcome of the pandemic - while student motivation has certainly been exacerbated by the current situation, the pandemic did not cause motivational concerns for and with students over the past decade or so. Fullan, Quinn, Drummy and Gardiner, in their 2020 report "Education Re-Imagined: The Future of Learning" clearly describe the motivation (or lack of motivation) phenomena:

 "The challenges highlighted during the disruption should not come as a surprise. Over the last decade, student engagement has plummeted. Almost one in every five students does not reach a basic minimum level of skills to function in today’s society. (OECD) 

 Moreover, many school systems have not maintained pace with technological advances; schools have not provided widespread access to digital tools. When the pandemic hit, 1 in 5 students did not have access to the internet or a device to support them in lockdown. This disruption revealed systems that already struggled to support all learners. To put it plainly: it’s time to situate education as an instrument of individual and societal good." (Fullan, et. al. 2020)

Motivation, student engagement and attention are all closely interwoven with cognition and academic achievement. When learners feel comfortable, are interested in attending to the learning, have tasks to take up that provoke their thinking and curiosity, their capacity for learning something new is maximized and their achievement improves. These student perspectives are all connected through emotion and “emotion is the gatekeeper of motivation, cognition and attention.” Therefore, establishing an environment that focuses on well-being and belonging for all is job one for teachers. In short, well-being and quality learning are intimately related. (Fullan, et. al. 2020)

To improve student engagement, educators must find ways to strengthen and continue to foster emotional connections with students, and to help learners develop greater emotional connections with each other.  As our children come back to school in the fall following a long stretch of uncertainty, forced isolation through fixed student cohorts in school, stretches of online learning or periods of quarantine due to illness or exposure to positive cases, they physical safety requirements may begin to wane just as the emotional needs take centre stage. 

Social isolation from a larger peer group inhibits the growth of social interactions that would usually grow and change through any given school year in the company of multiple peers from a variety of classroom settings as children gather both formally and informally throughout a school day. This may lead to loneliness, less connection or fractured relationships with other children they are now seeing repeatedly for a whole school year with an almost relentless consistency. During periods of online learning, social and peer connections may be completely interrupted or, in some cases, disrupted with longer-term consequences for friendships. Students may have enjoyed online learning more than school, or appreciated the independence and autonomy it afforded them. Others may have enjoyed their leisure pursuits more than normal, with lots of play in the picture. Some students may have simply refused to participate and idly pursued other interests while at home. And any emotionally challenging period of time in a child's life will naturally impact motivation, attention to task, ability to cognitively engage in an activity and their overall level of interest in being in school - their school engagement. 

Teachers can ease the social pathway

  • facilitating connection and conversation

 • re-creating norms that will allow students to feel psychologically                                                              safe in an optimistic and efficacious learning environment 

• Inviting each student’s perspective by asking open questions so that each student feels connected to the learning community• Providing trauma-informed learning for staff, parents and students, enabling everyone in the school community to recognize and respond mindfully during this crisi

  • Appoint a caring adult to build a relationship with those students you know to be vulnerable (Fullan, et. al. 2020)

 It is clear that emotional health and student engagement are tied very closely together - to successfully re-integrate students into a world of engaged learning will take time and effort but it is essential if we are to support our learners to become adaptable, skilled thinkers and doers in the world. 

"Educators would be wise to examine their own practices that can extend flexibility, choice and voice to students. Simple ways to do this are to: 

• Invite students to share the positive insights emerging from the pandemic. What did they learn? What did they learn about themselves? What are they grateful for?

 • “De-front” the classroom by taking the emphasis from the teacher and placing it on students 

• Promote collaboration among students. When students work in groups, there is flexibility, more voices engage, and smaller children can wiggle around as needed 

• Incorporate choice into assignments and classroom activities 

• Arrange the classroom to support student movement 

• Create a discrete way for students to share vulnerabilities or concerns 

• Enable students to make suggestions about what and how to learn

                                                                        - Fullan, et. al., 2020

Prior to the pandemic, education systems around the world were beginning to re-examine teaching and learning practices and to explore possibilities towards developing responsive approaches to learning that would engage students more fully and successfully in the learning process. 

Our current system has been called into question numerous times for its flexibility, ability to respond to student learning and weave effective use of technology organically into teaching and learning.  While reforms to education have received significant attention in the past couple of decades, they have been quite focused on improving teaching and learning in literacy and numeracy, and with the goal of improving high school completion, rather than focusing on enhancing the emotional connections students might make that will keep them connected to learning throughout their lifetimes. Living in an unpredictable global society requires attending to students' holistic needs as a person, rather than strictly their academic development.

"Quality learning must be built on the interests of students along the following dimensions:

 • Connecting to purpose and meaning

 • Challenging students to have high expectations 

• Positioning learning goals that focus beyond the basics 

• Using engaging pedagogies 

• Building relationships and belongingness

 • Providing opportunities to contribute to the world

This combination of readiness for change and urgency arising from the current crisis has the potential to shift the education system from one of outdated “schooling” to future focused ‘learning” and take learning out of the classroom and into the world." (Fullan, et. al., 2020)

Emotional Well-Being

A key finding through the multiple options that have emerged for teaching and learning through the pandemic has been the emphasis on the importance of student-teacher relationships. While this is not necessarily a new finding - relationships have long been the most common predictor of student success - it is telling that learners clearly indicate they do not want to be taught digitally, by and large, but rather by teachers who know them and understand how they learn best. (Class of 2030 & the Life-Ready Learning Report, 2020).  Most teachers with traditional pedagogy struggled with transferring their particular styles of teaching to the digital environment and found it challenging to engage students in open-ended learning tasks that would encourage creativity, collaboration or pique curiosities. 

Since relationships remain the strongest predictor of student success, and acknowledging the need to develop positive emotional well-being connections for students to foster interest in learning and positive student engagement, it is essential as we bring all our learners back together in open, inquisitive learning spaces that educators, parents, community partners and students seek to optimize student engagement through positive relationship development. 

Some key questions can foster deep reflection and be used to engage thinking about what are the next best steps for learners in our schools:

 1. What knowledge, skills and attributes do our students need to thrive in this complex world? 

2. What kind of learning is needed for this current and future complexity? 

3. How do we ensure equity? 

4. How do we attend to well-being? 

5. How can technology be best leveraged for learning in the future?

Our current system of educating children in schools was created to serve two purposes: 

    - to organize students when they learned (time)

    - to confine students when they learned (space)

 These two principles were useful in the 1800 and 1900’s but the COVID disruption has rendered them redundant. Students can learn and demonstrate this learning without bricks and mortar or bell times. With digital and deep learning, students can learn where they are. Students can learn when they are ready. They desire relationships with teachers who know them and achieve best success in that environment. Our challenge as educators moving forward is to determine how to best meet student learning needs in less structured environments, with fewer external controls and greater focus on motivation, relationship and curiosity. 

"For decades the literature has been flooded with discussion of future ready skills, including the higher cognitive, social emotional, and technical skills and attributes needed in a complex digital world. This kind of learning changes the learner’s perspective, behaviors, and develops skills for life. It leaves the learner wanting to learn more. 

We know one thing for sure. 

The absolute key to doing this is to cultivate the intrinsic motivation of students to learn, individually and together. The essence of this powerful learning is fostered by a student’s sense of purpose, meaning, belongingness and desire to make a contribution to society. Ignoring these essential goals is a profound weakness in many education systems." (Fullan, et. al., 2020)

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal

Eric Harvie School 

Something to Remember....Something to Share....

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NueIHENCckw

"To tell the truth that,  for a very long time in this country there were laws that sent Indigenous children to schools that were far away from their homes, and in those schools really bad things happened...to have that conversation with your children...to let them read the stories and for you to read with them...

If they are ready to have these conversations about why these laws were put into place, then be truthful that Indigenous people were seen to be inferior and that they needed to change their ways, their cultures, their language, their ways of knowing, being and walking in this world - these were not seen as something to share with dignity, not held with respect...

If the children are old enough to understand, you can talk about assimilation...you can talk about genocide and how that is actually what has happened in this country..." Monique Gray Smith

*************************************

It has taken me a long time to process the enormity of 215 unmarked childrens' graves - not because a story of unmarked graves for children have never surfaced before, but rather because they have.  I expect there will be blood woven through the annals of history - humanity has a long history of finding ways to kill each other without too much provocation, to be honest. Looking back through times past, one will find many sad and terrible examples of unmarked graves, unremarked deaths of a nation's youngest citizens, unreported child deaths for any number of not-particularly-valid reasons. I may react viscerally and with anguish to stories of genocide and assimilation but I do not find them to be shocking or overwhelming, they are part of the historical record written in words, in blood, in bone across nations of all political dimensions. 

What takes my breath away, makes me stop whatever I am doing because I am still in shock - is that we are still trying to cover any of this up rather than acknowledging we messed up and will do better in the future.  

"Do the best you can until you know better.

Then when you know better, do better.

- Maya Angelou

We do know better. Why are we hiding the truth? Why are we not releasing any and everything we know about residential school deaths, burials and losses so that, collectively as a nation, we are able to mourn and grieve and then do better? It is this knowledge that more cover-ups exist that keeps me awake at night. 

215 voices were silenced. Yet, it required a long time, investigations and insistence by the families for their truths to be revealed. That is roughly half the population of our school - imagine losing half the school's population of children - how quiet the world of school would become. Imagine the anguish of families never knowing what happened to their child after being taken away to school. A simple disappearance with no simple situation left behind. 

Last Monday, as classes gathered beneath our lowered flags to speak in hushed and tearful voices of what this discovery actually meant to them, a young child in grades 1/2 came up to me and asked, "But, Mrs. Kinsman, why did the teachers let this happen to the children?" 

I am not able to find words to offer in response to that question. 

********************************************

What we are able to do is speak from a place of empathy, of kindness, of peace. What we are able to do is share the stories of the survivors and the children themselves. We are able to acknowledge Canada has a bloodied past and still move on towards a brighter future. We are able to stop perpetuating the grief of determined searching in a world that already knows there are other truths to be found. 

"How do we want to be together? You hold me up when you are kind to me, when you play with me, when you respect me, when you listen to me...Kindness is really a salve right now, if you are looking for some ways to change things right now,  find ways to be kind." - Monique Gray Smith

When we were able to sit with our learners and hear their questions, and to discuss the history of our country in real terms rather than postcard descriptions, we learned from the children that being 'different' in any way was not necessarily a trait to be overlooked or diminished but more likely to be celebrated. if one can draw 'differently' than most other children, or play a musical instrument better than expected, or create a game that wows all their classmates, this accelerates feelings of success and belonging. Different does not necessarily mean inferior.  At least not in our school - 'we have room for different', as one child reassured me today. 

Last week, we had children playing a game where they were recruiting new Peace Ambassadors for the school - complete with questionnaires and clipboards. Part of the game was to present yourself as a potential Peace Ambasador for the school and describe how you might make our school a peaceful community. There were lots of ideas that emerged from the game - more importantly for me was the clear understanding of what makes a peaceful community care for each other articulated by several students.  We are far from perfect, but we encourage children to do their best to accept each other as joyous, creative humans in a busy, loving school. We encourage kindness and acceptance. We promote sharing and caring.

                    

                                        And these days, kindness is definitely a salve.

***********************************************

To remember the 215 children whose graves are believed to be located on the Residential School site in Kamloops, BC, we have decided to incorporate the number '215' somewhere visibly on our first reflective outdoor mural.  We have worked hard with Saa'kokoto over our five years to develop a clear sense of how Indigenous perspectives can both inform and strengthen our understandings of the natural world, as well as human relations, and many of these teachings and learnings have been captured in our overall mural design. To our way of thinking, this is how we move confidently into a more just and caring world - with kindness, with empathy, with a deep appreciation for the value of humanity as we honour every human life and build a peaceful community together. 

We will continue the discussions, the reflections, the story sharing with each other and around each other. we will not forget the 215 who were found last week,  nor be wholly shocked when other situations like this arrive. We will celebrate and embrace our differences and work hard to urge new approaches, renewed openness to the truths that are lurking in the backgrounds of the stories being told and shared. We will remember and we will share. 

***********************************************

 

"And this is one of those times when can begin to come together...to say 'Can you imagine?' And that is what is happening now. Parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles are imagining and the empathy is coming alive. And that empathy will move us forward and it will create change. We cannot rely on the federal or provincial governments for that change - we've seen that. 

The change is incumbent upon us as citizens who live in this place we call Canada. 

So, I invite you to have these conversations with your children, in your classrooms, with your family and friends.

Hold the space.

The reality is that we are only beginning this journey to feel, to understand, to uphold dignity and to move forward. 

And every single one of us has a role in this. 

So I invite you to create a role for yourself.

What can you be reading, what can you be listening to, who are having conversations with so that, when the children ask you - and they will - that you are ready to have these conversations.

A big part of all of this is our humility to realize there is lots we don't know and more to be revealed. 

Please continue to educate your heart, your mind and your spirit." 

- Monique Gray Smith

Something to remember; something to share. 

Lorraine Kinsman

Principal