Katie Brody – Director of Studies K – 6

Parent /teacher phone calls in place of Parent Teacher Night (PTN)

A huge thank you to all of our class teachers who are in the process of calling all parents to provide them with feedback about their child’s progress. More than ever, parents have an equal chance to discuss their child’s approach to learning and together the teachers and parents can set goals for the coming weeks and months.

Keeping the glass half full whilst in lockdown

Owing to the challenges of home learning during lockdown, feelings of stress, panic, anxiety and fatigue can hover like a dark cloud above the heads of our teachers, our students and our parents. When this dark cloud won’t easily dissipate, these feelings can become more acute and can cloud the judgement of everything, even those aspects of our lives that wouldn’t normally affect us very significantly. How do we maintain a positive mindset and seek support and understanding from others without spreading our negative thoughts like an additional contagion? 

According to Sigal Barsade from Characterlab.org: “While emotions spread more easily in person, they also get transmitted through social media, phone calls, emails, and video chats. In fact, negative emotions related to isolation may make us even more susceptible.”

The Primary School leadership team continues to focus on supporting our colleagues, students and parents through the challenges of home learning. As we ride the waves, we encourage our school community to try, as my long time mentor has always said: “to keep our eyes on the horizon, not on the choppy waters”. It is with this pursuit of positivity, that we need to flatten any possible curve of negativity. I would like to suggest we focus on something new, The Four e-Manuel L’s of Lockdown. 

A focus on these e-Manuel L’s aims to lift our gaze from the stressful and restrictive aspects of home learning, to the profoundly wonderful. I imagine that this list would be appreciated by the positive psychology movement who would, I am sure, have us writing a collective gratitude journal. 

Please note that my intent here is not to encourage any of us to forget or ignore the seriousness of COVID-19, nor minimise the experience of our families who are really doing it tough right now. Like everyone across the world, the tragedy of illness, the loss of life, the profound downturn in the world and local economy and the acute emotional, physical and social suffering of so many, is most certainly front of mind. I am simply hoping to add a perspective to the mix that brings a smile to the faces of those who need it, or provides a perspective to those who can’t (yet) see the positives in the home learning context. In addition, “People who regularly practice gratitude by taking time to notice and reflect upon the things they’re thankful for, experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems.” (Derrick Carpenter from Happify Daily)

The Four e-Manuel L’s of lockdown

Laughter and joy

Boy, have we all laughed so hard whilst in lockdown! Our teachers, school leaders and parents have shared some hilarious memes, YouTube clips and cartoons throughout the weeks. The clever people who created these have made light of some simple challenges in the situation we are facing. The play on words, the satire, the amended lyrics to well-known songs and the cartoons that make us reflect on the strangest things we are doing, all entertain and help us to laugh at ourselves. In addition, there are many joyful videos on YouTube with talented choirs singing about healing the world and the great ways in which this crisis is actually changing life as we know it (for the better). Our teaching staff have also made a myriad of videos to both educate and entertain our students. I am sure you’d agree that many of these clips would make phenomenal movie audition tapes or applications to NIDA. Many of our teachers, leaders, students and parents have real technical genius and are extraordinarily creative, intelligent, witty and humorous. Our very own Principal and Heads of School have shared their experiences through a series of videos that show their warmth, their strength and best of all, their ability to be humorous whilst also supporting our whole school community. 

Lessons

As the Director of Studies, I have full access to every teacher’s digital lessons on our learning platform, which has been a significant privilege. I click and scroll through the elaborate, visually stunning, highly innovative learning experiences that our teachers have created and I beam with pride. These lessons are clearly appreciated by our parents, many of whom have emailed their child’s teacher affirming messages of awe and appreciation. Addressing the syllabus aims in creative ways, our teachers have truly manifested their ability to think outside the box, apply concepts to the students’ real lives more than ever, and encourage students to synthesise knowledge in new ways. Students have been displaying their understanding in a range of modes and even our youngest have learned to photograph, record, airdrop, screenshot and upload competently. Given that only a few months ago, many of our teachers had never used this digital platform, we are witness to their growing confidence, level of skill and recognition of the place that technology has in the classroom. James Nottingham (Learning Pit) would be so proud of the self efficacy that pervades our teacher’s hearts and minds, now that they have stepped themselves through the most swift and difficult professional learning of their careers. Our parents too, many of whom were schooled in vastly more traditional ways, have learnt that using technology in the classroom is not about subject-specific ‘gaming’, nor does it act as a simple substitute. Quite the contrary, parents can see the power of deliberate online teaching pedagogy and how it can be enabled through purposeful use of technology. We are truly redefining teaching for understanding and skill development and that is so positive.

Learning approaches

Many of our younger students began their approach to learning online with a lot of excitement, yet they did not necessarily have all the skills in the beginning that they certainly do now. Which child would not want to be handed their school iPad or MacBook to use at home with the proviso that they needed to use it all day? Lessons began and it was not long before we were all gripped with the enormity of the support that parents would have to provide at home during the school day. Teachers began working around the clock to maintain the steady stream of instructional videos, step-by-step directions with visual cues, learning tasks and project work and of course marking and feedback aiming to encourage student growth. The collective effort of parents and teachers has been profound. Now, a number of weeks later, thanks to the encouragement, organisation and commitment of our parents working alongside teachers more than ever before, the children have become tenacious, determined, and more independent than any of us thought they could be at such a young age. Students are logging into Zoom lessons like it is a magic portal that leads to the friendly and eager face of their teacher and they competently navigate this whole new world of online etiquette, sitting in their virtual classroom with a Hogwarts digital background and their new puppy on their lap. Students are asking and answering questions, listening to stories, watching their teacher demonstrate and they are then making their own excellent videos to show the depth of their understanding. Students are contributing to the learning with the click of an unmute button and typing away on a shared Google doc, whilst discussing knowledge and developing skills with their peers in virtual breakout rooms. Is this not remarkable!? 

Love

In my 21 years as an educator, never has the profile of teachers been so prominent, so protected and so positive. Emanuel parents have always valued our educators and they have enjoyed hearing about the learning in class from their child. Now that we are home together in a virtual sense, parents can watch or listen as though they are right there in the classroom. It has been like Open Day every day and it has been our pleasure to invite parents ‘in’. The emails filled with thanks that have been sent to and from parents and students as well as the positive feedback provided during zoom lessons, keeps everyone feeling uplifted. Teachers have enjoyed the ‘PTN’ phone calls to parents, the casual chats between colleagues and the whole class zoom ‘catch up’ sessions. On their website, Edutopia posted a beautiful video for Teacher Appreciation Week in the US that exemplifies the love and care that teachers continue to show the students as well as their heartache at not being able to see ‘their kids’ until the lockdown is lifted. On social media, #teachersrock has created an outpouring of love and appreciation for teachers across the world. My hope is that some of our students will be so inspired that they will choose teaching as the profession of choice for their future.

It won’t be long before our first groups of students walk back through our school gates to enjoy at least one or more days per fortnight learning on campus again. No doubt parents will breathe a collective sigh of relief as children leave their car to walk into school. On the other side of the gates, teachers and friends will be welcoming our young people with warm smiles and open arms (from a distance). Our on-campus days will be spent reconnecting, discussing our experiences and having time to learn together without needing to press ‘unmute’. We will walk into classrooms instead of clicking on a link and best of all, we will see the faces of our teachers and friends without seeing our own face on a screen. Whilst we all can’t wait until schooling is back to normal, we can still rejoice in the positives of this home learning experience and consider the skills and dispositions that we can continue to use once we are back in the classroom.

People may accuse me of looking at this period of home learning through rose coloured glasses, but it is just my way of deciding to take a perspective that keeps my own head above water during such a challenging time in all of our lives.