There has been a concerted effort in Canada to keep school open from Kindergarten to Grade 12 largely to address social-emotional needs for stability and predictability for students in their world. Other natural disasters have kept students from school with surprisingly little impact on their academic achievement. “When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita decimated Louisiana in 2005, student achievement did not plummet” (1). “Researchers who followed elementary students displaced from schooling after the Enschede fireworks disaster in the Netherlands in 2000 reported that short-term achievement increased” (2). What has remained constant is the need for responsive parents stepping in to establish a caring context and a sense of normalcy.
Classroom teachers have welcomed students back to school during the pandemic and gone about integrating rigorous handwashing procedures, staying in cohorts, sanitizing equipment, creating a safe and secure classroom environment, and assigning weekly outdoor play zones. Kids were delighted to return to school full time in September and are going about the business of learning. I have dealt with fewer office referrals for poor choices than ever before in my career as a vice-principal, or principal. Students have a common language around self-regulation and restorative practices which necessitate empathy. Teachers have developed a strong sense of personal efficacy in their ability to keep their students safe and learning in their classrooms.
Creating community across groups presents a greater challenge. Building community on staff usually involves eating lunch together, discussions at Staff Meetings, participation in professional development and chatting while waiting for the photocopier or signing in at the office each morning. The landscape for creating and solidifying relationships has shifted significantly. This has made the development of collective efficacy a big challenge. Yet, Hattie’s finding that collective efficacy yields an impact size on student learning of 1.39 (3) makes it a goal worth aspiring to.
Teachers experienced the first pivot to the virtual world when all classroom instruction went online after Spring Break in 2020. Our connection point was the TEAMS Meeting. There were varying degrees of understanding and use of this Office 365 Platform. The platform had been set up by the previous principal. Thanks, Mr. Peeters. I had attended training with a team of teachers and set up the channels like chapters of a book, for ease of access. There was a steep learning curve on how to host a meeting and required Microsoft changes to make this process more transparent, like it’s ZOOM competition. However due to the integration of options to set up instruction for students online and create portfolios of work, the district decided that the Office 365 platform was closest to hitting the target of meeting our needs in the Vancouver School Board.
The weakness of early meetings was on me. I had already mastered creating a PowerPoint to engage staff in discussion during staff meetings with stopping points for discussion. When I created the PowerPoint slides to share on a screen with my staff, I lost the ability to keep my finger on the pulse of the room. My years of training as a facilitator fell by the wayside, as I invited people to a meeting, talked through the PowerPoint presentation, then asked for questions, comments, and input to icons with video off and muted microphones. Minimal response. No interaction between staff. No community building. Really bad meetings.
As my background knowledge has increased, the meetings have gotten better. Information items on shared on the appropriate channel of The LivingstoneStaff TEAM. At staff request, a weekly SWAAG (Staff Week At A Glance) was published on the weekend. I started to plan staff meetings with greater opportunity for staff to talk to each other. I put people into break out rooms during TEAMS meetings with a question for discussion. I facilitated a course for administrators through the British Columbia Principals Vice Principals Association in early July 2020 via ZOOM. We were magically put into rooms with our group of 6 people first thing in the morning, at the end of the day, and for discussion throughout the day. By the end of the four-day course, we had established a sense of rapport and we easily engaged in discussion. Retirements, shifts to other jobs in the district and leaves have resulted in a significant number of new staff. I have been assigning staff to random groups to help them get to know each other. It has also provided more focused discussion around school goals.
I have also now learned to visit each room during breakout sessions. I’m going to date myself now – I feel exactly like Jeannie, from the 70’s sit com, I Dream of Jeannie. I have an impulse to cross my arms and nod my head while I appear in a room. I was concerned that I would stifle conversation, but that doesn’t seem to be the case when I miraculously appear in the room. I have felt in some sessions that participants assume performance mode when a facilitator enters the break-out room. However, the conversation has fluidly carried on. I believe it is because we have already established a rapport. I also don’t stay long in each group.
The International Literacy Association has offered professional development online and there are a number of excellent sessions focused on asynchronous and synchronous learning. They suggest that the break-out session should have a time limit of about 10 minutes with a specific response task. I have tried the reporting back to the group from each group but I have not had favourable feedback about this process. This week, I provided an Office 364 form to complete with feedback about future directions and requests for additional support. Looking forward, I intend to make better use of tools such as Padlet. I’m looking for other suggestions if you have any.
Student community is usually developed through shared activities that bring students together for a common activity, crossing paths on the playground, and work with buddy classes. The only face to face community building is during outdoor play where each cohort is assigned a time and a play zone. Two recess times and two lunch times. Again, the landscape for creating and solidifying relationships has shifted significantly.
My first effort to build student community online in March was met with marginal success. I would video-tweet out a message to students from various places to connect with students via the Twitter feed on the school website. I was given good marks for risk taking, but I was fairly wooden and never happy with the end product.
In September, I requested that an All-Students TEAM be set up for communication with the entire student body and staff. There is a channel for online performances and the capability for me to do online school assemblies. Again, I have been given high marks for risk taking as the students have witnessed my learning curve. I have done a particularly nice job of modeling resilience in the face of failure. I am fortunate to have a BFF from high school who is a digital media specialist. I’ve learned to follow his direction and to understand what I did wrong when I opt for a short cut. Thanks, Armando!
As a school principal, I cross all cohorts and wear a mask when I am outside of my office. After a school wide assembly in fall, a number of primary students mentioned that they really liked seeing my whole face. Apparently, my eyes tell that I’m smiling but it’s nice when my mouth does some of the work. I decided that I needed to engage with the students in a way other than being out on the playground in mornings, after school, and at breaks.
My new tech challenge was inspired by Sol Kay, a parent in my school community when I was principal at University Hill Elementary School. She invited me to participate in a documentary she was doing on mindfulness and posted as part of her series on Instagram – InnerLight Journey by Sol. Along with scaffolding from Sol, Steve Dotto @DottoTech, and the iMovie Made Easy course by Shelly Saves the Day on YouTube @shellysavesthe, I stuck my toe into the water.
In my capacity as president of the British Columbia Literacy Council of the International Literacy Association, I have been working on a project with our provincial council. We have put out an invite for people to participate in creating an annotated bibliography of books to share with students to support social emotional learning by representing the diverse cultures within our B.C. schools, as well as providing stories or resilience, and social justice. Our goal is not to create a strictly didactic list but recommend high quality literature which share authentic voices and stories to nurture empathy and understanding. Special thanks to Mr. Muress, our librarian at Livingstone, for the many selections he has added to the list.
I wanted to create a YouTube channel with me reading these highly recommended books to support the development of shared understandings at our school. I chose to read picture books that were accessible to primary students to read, but also provided models for the writing of students in the intermediate grades. With Armando on speed dial, my product is getting better. I wasn’t certain it was reaching my intended audience or worth the time and effort I was putting into the project. Then last week, I was teaching in a Grade 6/7 class when we were short a guest teacher. One of the students in the class told me that his brother listens to me read every night when he is going to sleep. The highlight of the month for me. I’m inspired to carry on and improve. The power of positive reinforcement.
I have since learned that I need better sound for it to be projected to the class. I now have the appropriate adapter and a microphone to improve the sound. Armando has provided more scaffolding for me to master green screen. Ms. Lirenman and her class are providing Keynote support. Speakers who are part of the International Literacy Association speakers via ILA Next have also provided a number of follow-up ideas to develop reading and writing skills.
Shirt days have also been a positive way of facilitating group activity and stimulating conversation, largely about social justice issues that are so closely tied to social studies curriculum, and social emotional learning. Terry Fox shirts came out en mass for the annual Terry Fox Run. Our favourite Canadian hero had lots to teach us, even if we participated at different times of the day in cohorts. On Orange Shirt day, students learned about residential schools, and the learning shared with us by our Indigenous people. Black Shirt Day refocused our attention on the purpose and meaning of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms. February 24th, Anti-Bullying Day is on the horizon. Teachers, SSA’s, the supervision aids, the custodians, the Office Assistants, the Spare Time Coordinator, our Director of Instruction, and I will all be wearing the CKNW shirts with “Lift Each Other Up” for Pink Shirt Day and throughout the rest of the year. Proceeds support local anti-bullying programs that teach empathy, compassion, and kindness. We want kids to understand our shared role in supporting each other across cohorts and our collective responsibility.
Ms. Ferreira, our Kindergarten teacher, kicked off the first Wild Hair theme day. It was followed up with Hockey Jersey day to celebrate the return of hockey to break the monotony of Netflix. Mr. Bring, our Grade 7 teacher, is working with student leadership on other ways we can create school spirit.
Student voice in our online school assemblies has been a great way to focus student attention. Our Division 13 Kindergarten students and our Division 1 Grade 7’s have both done a great job at the Indigenous acknowledgment at the beginning of assemblies. We have now scheduled regular, monthly assemblies, and plan to incorporate more student voice.
We continue to look for ways to include parents more in our online school community. PAC Meetings have all been online since March. Access to the school has been limited. Parents do have online access to the All-Students TEAM through their child. This was most widely accessed during the Winter Show N’Share. Some parents continue to enjoy the regular tweets about school activities and resources that are available to parents. I am also trying to write more blog posts to provide parents with specifics around instruction and reporting. My recent post, Reporting Student Achievement in British Columbia, provides parents with an overview of recent changes in reporting in British Columbia and what they can expect in the formal written reports being issued in January. I’m looking for more ideas, if you have suggestions.
Footnotes:
1 and 2 – “Lessons From Pandemic Teaching For Content Area Learning” in The Reading Teacher, November/December 2020, Volume 74, Number 3, page 341.
3 – Hattie, J. & Smith, R., (2021). 10 Mindframes for Leaders. The Visible Learning Approach to School Success. Corwin. Thousand Oaks.
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