What A Principal Wants You To Know About School Post-COVID

School is almost out for summer, but this year, there won’t be hallways full of happy kids hugging their teachers goodbye and running to the freedom of a class-free July and August. Since the coronavirus pandemic hit and schools around the country closed, students have been isolating at home with overwhelmed parents for months. Virtual classrooms have been the norm. How have parents and teachers been coping? And what will school look like across provinces come September? 

To find out more about wrangling kids (and parents) over Zoom, and the toll the last few months have taken on teachers, we talked to a principal of an elementary school in Newfoundland about her new normal. “You want to make the virtual experience as close as possible to being at school, which is really challenging when you're not physically there,” she says. So, no online trips to the principal's office then? “I’m always available on Google Meet, but it’s been hard for kids, teachers, and even harder for parents,” she adds. 

Here, she breaks down some of the biggest challenges, how kids are graduating in the middle of a pandemic, and what going back to school could look like in the fall. 

It’s been a tough few months for parents, teachers, and especially students. What have you been worrying about the most during the pandemic?

A lot of my kids are in really vulnerable situations, and those are the ones that I'm worried about the most. Our breakfast program is where a lot of kids get breakfast, and the school lunch program is where their lunch is provided. Now, they're at home and their parents have to worry about breakfast and lunch as opposed to just one meal.

How do they reach out for help and how do we support them from a distance? There is also kids' mental health. At school, they had access to a counsellor. They could walk down the hall and pop their head in. It's a lot harder for them to access those resources when they're calling in online. Or maybe their parents haven't shared the resources with the child. I worry whether or not we are really getting to some of the kids that we need to get to. I feel like there's injustice for some kids whose school is their safe place.

It definitely has been an issue. For us, we've loaned out Chromebooks or technology to kids that need it. Most schools have done that. The tricky part in remote or rural areas is that the internet connection is really bad, and if you have two people working from home and then three kids who are school-aged on devices [it will be worse]. Having internet access available to all kids is going to have to be a key thing in order for virtual learning to happen across Canada if we are still doing it come September. The ones who are in more vulnerable situations are going to fall behind, and that's not okay.

A lot of our teachers are connecting with kids virtually, but it's not necessarily a regular structured class. A big part of my job is working with parents and sharing [with them] that teaching doesn't look the same way it did when we went to school. When we were younger it was sit down, do homework, and not so much hands-on. Now, kids learn through inquiry-based learning, which means it’s a lot of movement, physically doing things, and less pencil to paper. So, shifting parents' mindset in what they are doing at home is part of the adjustment. Teachers have so many different roles, it's not just teaching anymore, it's making sure the kids' emotional well-being is okay, making sure that they're fed, making sure that all of their needs are being met, and that's working with the family so that they feel like you're a team. You have to have a team approach.

It can be as simple as parents baking with their kids. That is a great learning opportunity. You're teaching them measurements, you're teaching them how to actually make something, they could even do a journal entry, so it's connecting English Language Arts (ELA), science, math, all in one thing. It's not your traditional sit down and do a worksheet. If kids are engaged in activities, that takes the stress off parents. That is a big, big part of what we're doing at the moment.

We've had a number of parents request that they want more one-on-one virtual time with the teacher. And that makes sense, but there's also a big learning curve for teachers getting comfortable with using the technology. And then you have parents sitting with their child on Zoom or Google Meet, the conversations that you would have in the classroom, you’re now having with a parent next to them. So, now you have 26 kids in the classroom, and you also have 26 parents. Sometimes, as educators, kids tell you about what happens in their home, now 25 other people are hearing that. We had one student talk about how their cat threw up all over the floor, and the mom was mortified that the whole class heard. That story isn't a confidentiality issue, but there are things that kids would normally share and now they are less likely to.

We’re keeping it really simple. We have a video message going home to students from the teachers. They're doing a virtual celebration, as well as hoodies with all their names signed on it as a memory. This time of year is usually really fun with graduation and there’s a lot of field trips that make kids really, really happy. They’re outside all the time. I’m sad that we’re not physically in school this June, but hopefully we'll be back in September.

Honestly, it's challenging. In our school we have two bathrooms, a primary bathroom and an elementary bathroom, so how do you make sure that kids are social-distancing, using proper hygiene, and using the washroom safely? We have 25 kids in some classes in not very big spaces, and we have flexible seating, so that means they can choose where they want to sit. They can sit on beanie chairs or on mats or at circular tables. Learning for us is going to look so different, especially since a lot of it is hands-on.

How do you do that when you're used to being in such close contact? How do you physically distance in the gym when you're playing sports, and how do you physically distance on the playground? How do you physically distance with choir and band or when we have technology in every classroom? Are we wiping down the technology every time a student touches it? There's a lot of things that you have to consider when bringing kids back into the classroom.

Parents need to know that, when the kids come back physically to school, whatever that looks like in September, it'll be our job to make sure that they catch up on anything they've missed over the past few months. We’ll meet kids where they are. If we have a kid who is reading at a kindergarten level and they're in Grade 3, we just meet their needs when they're in the Grade 3 classroom.

People also need to know that, for the most part, teachers want to be back in their classrooms. Virtual learning isn't the ideal for us no more than it is for parents, but whatever connection we can keep with kids throughout all of this is the most important thing.