This article was first published in Leadership Ed, Issue 11, Term 2, 2020 under the title, Plumbing the depths of resilience: how school leaders have navigated the unthinkable.
The past months have been unlike any other time we’ve known as school leaders.
The strategic pivot has become the norm as we have guided our schools through rapid and regular changes to the way we do things. Fundamental shifts of practice have occurred at a pace and scale we would never before have considered feasible. Changes to school policy and practice which would usually be rolled out carefully over an extended timeframe, after pilot programs and wide-reaching consultation, have been implemented, in some instances, overnight.
This seismic shift in the nature of schooling has had to be navigated with urgency, by all schools and for all students, yet all the while with the diverse needs of each school community in mind. Every school leadership team has had to chart their own course during this time.
In the face of the global impact of COVID-19, these past months have required schools to embrace a new normal. It has been a remarkable period for schools in which time has seemed to stand still, yet also rush headlong towards what has seemed an unpredictable future. What has been achieved at pace this year is quite extraordinary. The writer behind Twitter handle @LeBearGirdle put the experience of school leaders during the final weeks of Term 1 succinctly in his twist on the old rhyme:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Except March, which has 8000.
@LeBearGirdle
Only last term, I wrote of the need for schools to prepare our students for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future. Little could we have known how essential that preparation would be, as students around the world have been required to adapt to a new learning environment, and to do so with limited notice and little choice. The skills and dispositions that we predicted would be necessary for our students to thrive in an unknowable future have been needed instead to survive in our present, and not only for our students, but for our whole learning community.
We have needed the agility to adapt our practices to rapidly changing circumstances and the flexibility to pivot at short notice when those circumstances continued to change before us. As school leaders, we have needed to be proactive, yet grounded, in our approach to the global pandemic. We have needed to provide stability and certainty for our communities, to give reassurance that the learning and wellbeing of our students and staff is in hand. We have also had to remain nimble-footed enough to respond rapidly to changes thrust upon us, often without much notice, executing strategic pivot after strategic pirouette, each new direction possibly contrasting with that most recently communicated with our school community.
To do this, we have needed to plumb the depths of our personal resilience. Decisions of such substance as those made by our leadership teams at this time were never likely to please all stakeholders. We have needed to digest the full breadth of community opinion, to be able to cut out the noise, and then to make the decision when to adapt our stance and when to hold firm. We have needed to act quickly, when we would normally take the time to sit back and reflect.
At the heart of our role has been the need to communicate, clearly and calmly, not too often, nor too infrequently, not in too much detail, nor with too little, to keep our community informed about the shifting steps without overwhelming or causing worry. And, as school leaders, we have done this.
We have navigated rapid and changing shifts in policy with an agility which has served to highlight the professionalism and capacity of the teaching fraternity to focus on what is most important: the learning and wellbeing of our students and our staff.
Beyond tiredness, much has come from the experience of guiding our schools from learning on campus to learning at home, and back again. As schools return to the stability of learning on campus, we have an opportunity to draw on our newly proven agility, and to take some of the changes forward with us, rather than settling into the comfort of the familiar.
It is worth considering how the questions we grappled with as school leaders during the peak of this global crisis will change the way we think about schooling post-pandemic.
We may have asked ourselves what learning really looks like. Over these past months, school education has been on the tongues of teachers, students, parents and caregivers, journalists, politicians and policymakers alike as never before. From school closures, home schooling, learning at home and learning from home, to online, remote and continuous learning, and transitions to and from on-campus learning, observing the language around school education at this time has been eye-opening.
More significant though, are the inevitable discussions of what constitutes learning and where (and how) it takes place. Traditional perspectives on the teacher-centred classroom and more ‘modern’ views of a learning environment guided by student voice and agency have each been examined and challenged, as what goes on for our student learners and what our teachers manage each day is made more visible with schooling shifted from the classroom to the kitchen table.
Indeed, many editorial inches in the past months have been devoted to the challenges faced by parents navigating the complexity of supporting student learning at home.
Complexity has certainly been a characteristic of the times for teachers, too. We may have been unsure of what approaches to learning we should implement in our newly remote classrooms. Indeed, some may have wrestled with where to begin, as we sought to cater for the complexity of students learning from home (some with access to technology and some without), while others were learning at school (some with access to their regular teachers and some without).
Teachers have sought to balance synchronous and asynchronous modes of lesson delivery, which for many has meant seeking a balance between the known and comfortable, and the new and unfamiliar. In its guidelines for online learning, teaching and education continuity planning for schools, the International Baccalaureate notes that “while it is not recommended to experiment in emergency situations, innovation, creativity and resilience are required to make things work.
Most schools will discover they need to be adaptive and fast-thinking in order to ensure that learning continues in a healthy way”. As leaders guiding our teams during this time, the need to offer support for, and reiterate our confidence in, the expertise and professionalism of our teachers as they experiment with new ideas has never been more important. Trust has been our most valued commodity.
For many school leaders, it has been the strength of professional networks that has provided much-needed inspiration and support during these challenging times. In particular, the role of crowdsourcing, through such online platforms as Twitter, has provided opportunities to remain connected to (and to expand our network of) colleagues, to share our learning across a global community and to draw from tried and tested examples of best practice when curating approaches to teaching and learning for our own schools.
Back in 2012, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) highlighted the important role of “the wisdom of crowds … [in] enabling people with similar interests to collaborate…, help others, learn something, and gain recognition”, with such collective problem-solving made more efficient and effective through “the widespread availability of the internet and social media”. Never has this been more true than over the past months.
As school leaders, we and our teams have, by necessity, expanded our skillsets beyond that which we had previously exercised. We have become video editors, infographics designers, and dexterous webinar hosts. Adoption of technology-based teaching and learning solutions has seen self-professed troglodytes surprise even themselves in their capacity to implement, and even enjoy, the use of digital learning technologies.
We have developed a healthy appreciation for minimalism and decluttering, as we pare back our calendars and closely monitor how we use our teachers’ and students’ time. We have used online collaboration tools like never before as we embraced new ways of connecting with our parents, students and colleagues.
We have firmly positioned ourselves as teachers and leaders in the role of guide on the side, rather than sage on the stage, and we have given our students agency in guiding their learning, with a flexibility that our on-campus learning environment may previously have been unable to offer.
We have needed to meet daily, often at night and during the weekend, making significant decisions overnight in some instances. We have needed to draw on the collective wisdom of the team, enabling each leader to play to his or her strengths. We have each needed to maintain our sense of humour, and to approach the challenge of the situation with positivity. We have been made more aware of the power of our words. The messages we give our community set the tone for how they respond, so we have endeavoured to highlight the most desired responses to the circumstances (“We have seen great resilience and stamina from our students given the curve ball thrown their way”) and to acknowledge the gravity of the situation without overdramatising it.
Amongst all this, we have also worked tirelessly to ensure that our students and staff remain safe and supported, and, despite the challenges of the remote learning environment, that the wellbeing of our community remains our paramount consideration.
This year has presented a series of almost inconceivable challenges for school leaders, as we have adapted swiftly to the impact of the novel coronavirus on our schools. The fast pivot that leadership teams have had to facilitate over the past couple of months has highlighted the tenacity, adaptability and resilience of educators and educational leaders.
It has been truly inspiring and deserving of great acclaim. Hopefully, from the shifting sands of the current educational environment, a greater understanding of the important work our educators do and the role our profession plays in providing stability, safety and connection for our communities will have bloomed.
Adam Majsay 