I was asked to write this article for a charity who are working for parents so that schools are healthy and safe for children as they return full time in September 2020.
It’s been a turbulent time for schools followed by a summer of speculation about what they will look like in September. As we get ready for a new school year, I’ve reflected on what we learnt as we phased our whole school back through June and the encouragements I’d want all teachers to hold onto as they return.
Teaching is a high calling
Fred Rogers, who taught children through the medium of television for over 40 years, articulated many profound thoughts including this: ‘The best thing you can do for anybody is to offer one more honest adult in their lives’. Children depend on such people to provide them with a community which offers thoughtful stability in an often uncertain world. Each day in schools we are given opportunities to be that adult in the lives of children. Not only this, but we enjoy the privilege of helping children discover more of who they are and drawing out the different gifts within them. To inspire and unlock human potential is a special role entrusted to teachers. I worked for someone who described schools as ‘reservoirs of hope’ where children catch a sense of who they could become and receive the guidance and support they need to move towards that goal. For many teachers, being unable to teach face to face in the classroom took away one of the great joys of teaching: seeing visibly the difference that our influence and instruction makes in individual lives. One of our parents commented that having her children at home made her value even more that teaching is not something that anyone can do, but that it is a special vocation in society to help nurture the next generation.
Teaching is a partnership with families
My children were born in Africa and one of the phrases used repeatedly there was: ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. It was a healthy recognition that families are integral to the lives of children but that they depend on a deeper network of extended family and society to support them. Strong societies have been built on an understanding that institutions are vital anchors in our lives. Institutions, made up of broken and flawed people, can themselves be broken and flawed, but they are a supportive scaffold which holds us together. Coming together after being apart reminded our school community that there is a healthy web which binds us to each other and that this web works best when trust and co-operation are fostered. When many of our families returned to school, they were more protective of their children but more mindful of how significant school was for their family stability.
Healthy schools are positive places for children to develop and thrive
Over the summer our school hosted a ‘summer school’ for families who had received limited face to face education since March. We did so because we wanted to share beyond our own community some of the benefits we had enjoyed through being open from June. A number of parents commented on how they felt they had got their children back, that there was an obvious injection of life and joy by being in community again. One parent shared how their daughter who normally loves reading, had barely picked up a book through lockdown, but came home from summer school reading avidly. Perhaps in the daily effort of preparation, teaching and marking, we overlook these intangible things but they shouldn’t surprise us. Communities where individuals live together, learn together, make mistakes together and learn through them, are places where people grow and thrive and every healthy school provides this opportunity for children.
To live out our high calling, to partner with families, and to be a healthy place for children, school leaders need to give the gift of courage and hope to their staff. After our staff met on June 1st to prepare to re-open school, one teacher emailed me and said, ‘What could have been a negative morning was optimistic and inspiring’. I shared how an alternative meaning of CEO in a school is ‘Chief Educational Optimist’, and that as leaders we strive to be hopeful so we can lead people with courage. Three weeks into re-opening one of our parents said to me, ‘You’re courageous but not reckless and I’ve been really helped by seeing your attitude’. Some of the wider community around our school shared with us how much hope seeing our school back gave them. There were moments where I felt the weight of responsibility for protecting the school and keeping those within it safe, but I also reminded myself that in the context of all the risks children in our country face, particularly the most vulnerable, schools are the safest place for children to be. Practically, I found it helpful to keep an eye on what the infection rate in our area was. Local prevalence numbers (Pillar 1 and Pillar 2) are available on the government dashboard and are important in quantifying risk. I could visualise how many times I would have to fill my school to have the likelihood of one infected person in it and this grounded my fears. I also used these numbers to judge the risk rating (severity of risk x likelihood) of different activities so that I was making thoughtful decisions.
As we partner positively with families, it is good to think of ways in which we can communicate warmth to adults and children. In our primary school, we put up bunting for children as they returned to welcome them back and show that we were genuinely pleased to be together again. We had to change our morning routine so ‘bubbles’ did not mix in the playground at drop off so I stood at the front gate and welcomed each child by name. We recognised the complex emotions every family felt returning to school and the mixed feelings they had being apart from their children again. Both before the school closures and after, I made a principle of limiting how much we talked about the virus and its impact in front of children. This included explaining through email communication with parents the alterations to routine that we had made for their children as they returned; for the children themselves, we stepped into these new routines without drawing too much attention to them so that school felt as much of a ‘homecoming’ as possible to them, rather than an alien landscape.
The parameters within which schools are operating have changed, but limitations approached positively can be opportunities for creativity. There were a number of adjustments we had to make to our daily routine but my attitude to these was to ask, ‘How do I make this necessary change a positive one?’. There were ‘better normals’ we discovered as we returned which we may not have arrived at if the guidance hadn’t forced us to adapt. My overriding concern as we came back was to let love drive out fear because fear saps strength but love brings life. Nelson Mandela summed up well the obligation we have to our children: ‘We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in any society, a life free from violence and fear’. As we move forward as a society, our schools play a vital part in rebuilding trust and hope, and equipping our children with the courage they need to live in a changing world.
