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Teaching in action – examples to share

Alerts – Level 3 AND Level 4 – all at once!

April1

Anniversary Day – 1pm – and we sit down to watch the what have become ‘normal’ 1pm announcements from Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the Director General of Health and the Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, about our current situation. It was this announcement where the PM stated that we were moving to Alert Level 3 – those who can work from home, schools closed to all except essential worker’s children effective of Monday night, social distancing (2m away from others outside your ‘bubble’) and increased limits on border control (only NZers allowed back into NZ and everyone had to self isolate for 14 days). COVID cases were increasing – all were associated with overseas travel, however there was fear that there were increasing concerns about community transmission. Level 2 was effective immediately, Level 3 from 48 hours time – midnight Wednesday.  Level 3 would see all of NZ go into lockdown – isolation in our own homes – for 4 weeks – 28 days!

First call to the Board Chair – he was also listening to the announcement too – and our discussion lead to how Tuesday would look, with the intention of the school closing on Wednesday night. Teacher Only Day as we had planned it (twice already) was over – and our plan for closing and distance learning in the future was instigated.

My next thoughts were with our family.  Anniversary Day meant we were home and our response was to think about what we would do for the next four weeks – ‘stuck’ at home, ‘stuck’ with each other – with nowhere to go!  What would we do?  What did we need? A shopping trip to Farmers, Smiths City, The Warehouse and Mitre 10 saw supplies of slippers, (more) board games, LEGO, flannel sheets, gardening supplies, paint, ping pong balls – and hair dye!! . . . (No food? The government had made it very clear that Supermarkets would remain open so we didn’t see food as a priority!). Our shopping trip was what I imagined a Grocery Grab to be like over a number of shops – but we had to pay!

Back home and I had to switch to school mode.

  • What was the priority for teachers on TOD?  Their minds would be with their families and preparing for that. Yet we needed to have something organised to consider for ‘distance learning’ in three weeks time. (The holidays were being moved forward – and then after Easter Term 2 would begin).
  • How could we ‘keep in touch’ – ensure everyone was ok in this time – while all being well apart?
  • What did my office staff need to do tomorrow in preparation for 4 weeks (at least) off site?
  • What did my property staff need to do? Rubbish? Rodent control? Security? Devices out of sight?
  • How would we run our planned BOT meeting?
  • I needed to send out a newsletter to our community – and an email to the staff
  • What else did we need to consider – teachers needed to remove their recent shells from beach trips, remove food  . . .

I wrote lists – lists for myself, my admin staff, my staff, my groundsman. I went to bed, but was up soon after adding more things to the list. I decided a FB group would be ideal for our staff to keep in touch – we could share photos, have conversations and know that some of our more vulnerable were looking after themselves. I can’t remember if it was late night or early morning but the group was made and set up.  I just needed to make sure that everyone could access it – and knew how to – and added that to the list for Tuesday morning with the staff.

I was awake again at 4:30 – wide awake. Going through the lists again – adding to the lists. What did I need to work from home – another list of things I needed to get and bring home in order to continue to work. I grabbed the biggest suitcase we had and parked it at the door so that I wouldn’t forget it. I decided I’d pack up my office and bring it home – in the suitcase (and probably another bag or two). I sent the odd email to avoid forgetting things when I got to school – my mind couldn’t stop – I couldn’t stop – forgetting something now would have no return after midnight Wednesday.

I set up a Google form – we needed to know if we had any essential workers who needed their children at school on Wednesday.  Yet another newsletter had to go out to the community about what we planned going forward . . . and I had to pack up my office – what did I need to pack? ERO bits and pieces (they will still be coming), BOT pack, Property folder (we have developments coming up), DT (we have work to build on), Community Trust info (we have a large grant coming our way and this is the chance to get it underway) – and the pandemic plan needs updating!!  This is what a pandemic really looks like! The list was growing and I just needed to get to school – I did – by 6:15am!

Teacher Only Day came and went – albeit with social distancing, a clearing of classrooms and teachers putting together programmes for post holidays – while we are still on lockdown. We decided we weren’t expecting ‘lessons’ this week.  Children needed to feel safe, families needed to get their heads around this new situation, everyone needed time. We had all felt a bit hard done by not being able to say ‘see you later’ to our children. It was decided that teachers would email each family personally to say ‘take care, see you later’ by the end of the week, that I would update the school FB page with activities that families could do, and that on April 15th I would upload the work that the teachers had planned for ‘distance learning’.

I emphasised to all staff that they needed to be off site on Tuesday afternoon.  We hadn’t had any essential workers indicate that they needed their children at school on Wednesday, the MoE had rung and I’d checked with them that I could close the school effectively immediately – they were happy with that. Being offsite Tuesday meant that staff still had 24 hours to think about anything else that they might need to come to school for – before we were banned – for the 28 days (at least).

Midnight Wednesday 25th March – we were in lockdown and physically isolated from the rest of the world – for 28 days – at least.

 

Well – what a year this last week has been! Prior to the Lockdown

April1

The phrase I’ve called this post is one I saw and definitely related to this time last week.  As I write this post I’m kicking myself – I should have started recording my experiences a week ago!

Our country is currently in a lockdown. We’ve been instructed by the government to ‘Stay Home to Save Lives’. Today is Day 7 of Lockdown – but let me take you back a couple of weeks.

Principals are leaders of learning – people who focus on the learning within their school and classrooms – all with a focus of ensuring our children leave as the best that they can when they move from our school.  I have never felt further removed from this as I have over the past three weeks.  Along with an impending ERO visit (that should have started two days ago), and the increasing awareness of what first came known to us as ‘CaronaVirus’ and is now clearly known by it’s scientific name – COVID-19 – we have had learning opportunities of other sorts.

We had a Pandemic Procedure in our school – however it never prepared us for the reality of a pandemic.  Prior to March 12th – when the World Health Organisation declared this as a world wide pandemic – it was a thorough procedure – but the reality was different. The need to ensure everyone is educated – teachers, students and parents – about what we were doing and why (ie that we weren’t overreacting) was important.  What did we do in addition to our procedure?

  • Ministry of Health posters about handwashing, coughing expectations
  • The presence of flowing soap, cleaning fluids and hand sanitiser EVERYWHERE we could!
  • Adding paper towels to our toilets and switching off the hand driers
  • No personal touching – no shaking hands, hugging, high fives (do you realise how many of these we do a day!!?)
  • Enacted on the daily emails that were coming from the Ministry of Education
  • Starting to plan ahead in regards to staff not being able to come to school (who had particular health conditions and/or immune compromised – or over 70 years of age.
  • Give parents the opportunity to remove their child from school if they were immune compromised.
  • Keeping information timely to staff and the wider community.
  • Constant contact with the Board Chair as to what we were enacting.
  • Cancelled assemblies (as these were gatherings of more than 100 people)
  • Sports events were cancelled (touch, swimming sports, rippa rugby tournaments)

By March 16th we were starting to put out daily COVID-19 updates to our families, a family had cancelled their trip to Hawaii to meet up with their Canadian family for a very special family celebration, and on a personal level we were starting to wonder if our family holiday to Bali was actually going to be able to go ahead.

While not being able to have our usual assemblies I took the ‘certificate’ children and house captains for that week’s assembly and ran a recorded assembly in our Ruma Nui. This was recorded by a Year 8 student and posted on our school FB page to enable the rest of the classes and parents to still celebrate our acknowledgements for the fortnight.  No hand shakes on presentation of the certificates turned into foot taps, and the assembly had only 30 children present – but over 700 views on Facebook!

View our ‘online assembly’ here.

As a Principal I can’t remember ever having a time where I was so obsessed with an issue – and why?  Things were changing so quickly.  I needed to ensure the emails I was receiving were being enacted, I needed to ensure the news I was hearing (that was sometimes changing by the hour) was being enacted on – and needed to be considering the potential change that meant for us as a school.

At our daily morning staff briefing at 11am I was usually able to give the staff an update from the MoE email, this information was often different information than we were filtering out to the community.  The community needed to know what we were doing at school – our school discussions needed to be about what we would do at the next stage – and each day seemed to be a next stage!

Sunday 22nd March and NZ is given the information that we are at a COVID-19 Level 2 Alert.  At Level 2 all 70+ year olds and anyone who is immune compromised are instructed to stay at home and not mix with the general public. Border restrictions were increased, travel was restricted to necessary travel only and people were asked to work from home if possible. For us as a school it had an impact – there would be some students who wouldn’t be able to come to school, some staff would be in the same boat. We started to think about how this would look for us.  I organised to meet with my DP and Board Chair the following morning to think about what it meant for us.

Monday 23rd March was Anniversary Day and we met in the morning.

My DP and I reorganised our TOD (planned for the 24th) due to our facilitator no longer being able to travel from afar as it wasn’t deemed ‘essential travel’. It was still to be a productive day and we would have been achieved a lot. After this we met with our Board Chair and agreed on the following:

  • No additional visitors into our school – this included RTLB, RTLit, Itinerant music teachers, MoE Special Ed, Sports coaches
  • Begin to think as a staff what distance learning might look like if we are asked to implement this.
  • Cancel all class trips that were planned
  • A plan put into place for before and after school so that parents weren’t on site. This included a rolling finish to our days, and teachers meeting students at the gate in the morning. This involved teachers at the gate to welcome students (and assure parents they would be fine!)
  • Acknowledging that anyone on site who showed signs of not being well would be asked to leave.
  • Asking all parents to be vigilant with children who show signs of being unwell, and letting them know that we would send anyone home who wasn’t well.

All of the above was all with the intention of keeping things as normal as we could, but minimising the contact children on our site would have with others. We wanted to assure them that we understood there weren’t any COVID cases in our community but that we were being proactive to ensure the safety of our students and staff.

HOWEVER – that plan was out of date within two hours of constructing it with the next announcement . . .  (see next post)

 

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