“A plan for COVID? Anyone? Anyone?” It sounds like the economics teacher in Ferris Buehler asking students questions for which they were not prepared. Prior to March 2020 no school district strategic plan included a design for remote education in the time of a pandemic. In all candor, good emergency planning in a school anticipated snow days, electrical outages, water and sanitation interruptions, tornadoes and hurricanes (depends upon your location), and now violent threats, but no plan anticipated COVID. A school district file cabinet may have held a folder of literature about the past threats of H1N1, avian flu, SARS or MERS. Files written but never enacted were considered in the abstract with theoretical responses. COVID was an abrupt knock down punch and most school leaders resembled kids the econ class, absent the droolers.
From our work in the absence of a COVID plan, what have we learned? The first lesson is a review lesson – “stuff happens!”. Stuff that cannot be anticipated in the manner that it must be dealt with. Stuff, stuff and more stuff just keep happening. COVID is not just unanticipated, it is unfathomable. Worse, it seems unwilling to go away quickly. Now that we are in the unfathomable, our lesson learned is that we must pull up our socks and get about the work to be done. Everyone has something to do or not do.
The second lesson is that leadership is not just an art and a science to be applied from an armchair. There is a lot of this type of leadership in our schools. When leaders have the enjoyment of time, resources and multiple options, leadership can consider what is best and what is needed and reconsider their considerations on the pathway to good decisions. However, a crisis requires a different kind of leadership. Crisis leadership contains a fast twitch muscle that responds to new stimuli quickly and nimbly. Nimble leadership is a blur of art and science spinning in time. Nimble leadership is a treasured commodity in our schools. Leadership in crisis situations does not have the luxury of time and fluid leadership does not have the option for reconsideration. The literature presents chapters on “nimble” leadership and its ability to monitor, adjust and make necessary, sometimes unforeseen, changes. Nimble decision making in crisis is understanding the big picture in terms of human faces, the multiple small steps people need to take, and making the best decision available at the time. Nimble is both decisive and transitive; there always is a next. Nimble is better able to deal with the onslaught of stuff.
Case in point: The announcement said, “Schoolhouses in this state will be closed as of tomorrow, but the education of children must continue”. Small district or large district, what do you do at that moment of that announcement not only to comply with the order to close but to create a new organization for remote education? Leadership’s immediate thought is that the schoolhouse will be closed for cleaning to assure student and employee safety and then we will re-open in several days. Immediate decisions followed this design. Closed for several days and then re-open. Just like snow days, we can do this. But, wait! Schoolhouses will be closed for one month. Stop. This is no longer like snow days. Teachers and students need to carry home everything they will need for teaching and learning for at least twenty-five school days. Then, what? Who knows?
I marvel at school leaders who were nimble over the first days and week of school closure in transforming their school’s teaching and learning from classrooms, studios, gyms and labs to school-provided home schooling. They used collaborative leadership to have tech specialists, learning management systems (LMS), teachers and school supervisors work the problem. It reminds us of NASA’s emergency with Apollo 13 and their need to focus solely on the problem of returning a disabled space capsule to earth. Their mantra was “Work the problem” – timely advice for nimble school leaders today.
I marvel at teachers who were nimble in creating lessons for home schooling that closely mirrored lessons at school. They kept to their curricular map for learning so that at the end of a month of homeschooling student work at home approximated student work at school. Teachers are morph the steps of a lesson they present in class to critical learning activities children can do on their own or with family assistance. They are writing lessons in clear language and simple steps day after day. The response from their students’ parents recognizes the effective work of these teachers. It is not accidental that these nimble teachers also are adept in using school-provided learning management systems for interactive communication with students and their parents. Nimble educators are connecting with children to cause them to be nimble learners.
Nimble leadership has work to do as their “nexts” keep arriving. How do we end a school year in remote education? How do we assess and grade schoolwork? Graduation for seniors? Summer school? Summer PD for teachers? What will school be like September? If we cannot open, how can we make remoted education next fall better than this spring? The list of stuff keeps growing.
The third lesson learned is that education is essential. I read and discount tweets and posts saying that “…remote educator only shows how much time kids waste in school…” and “…remote education proves that most school assignments are from workbooks…”. Those comments are always lurking. Instead, I focus on the high number of children who remain hungry for learning. They welcome contact with their teacher and the continuing string of learning assignments. Children awaiting their daily schoolwork resemble the good news on an evening news broadcast. They get little mention because their innate desire to learn is not sensational but naturally ubiquitous. These children are so many and usual that they are not newsworthy. They are real and they are the heart of essential, continuing education. They are what makes overcoming the onslaught of stuff the driving force of nimble educators.
Nimble school leaders and nimble teachers and the millions of children engaged in continued teaching and learning are the educational heroes in the time of COVID.