Are You OK?

It's been a month - only a month, but then again only a month. It feels like longer some days, OK, it feels like longer most days. And it's hard, it's really, really hard.

I start almost every meeting I have (Zoom, Google Hangout, FaceTime) by asking how people are doing. Most say that they're OK and then share a caveat or two. "Yeah, I'm OK but... it's really hard for my daughter. She misses her friends." "Sure, we're OK but... my husband is having a hard time." "Yep, I'm OK but... it was really eerie going to the grocery store."

It's OK not to be OK. And it's important to tell our students, our own children, our faculty, staff, family, and friends, that it's OK to not be OK. Because here's the truth, this doesn't feel OK. I saw this post this week from the Fred Rogers Center on Twitter (@FredRogersCtr):

I believe we can cross out the word children, and replace it with human beings because this is applicable to everyone who is alive in 2020. Our world is topsy-turvy, at best. In many ways, it's scary because we are not doing anything the way we used to. This impacts children. This impacts adults. This impacts human beings.

In this country, we continue to struggle to put a name on mental health. While we have made strides in this regard, there is still a stigma. I strive to create a world where people can share their depression, with the same ease that we share that we have a headache. I long for a day when we know mental health can be treated with medicine, the same way a headache needs Tylenol or Advil. I hope for a day when we can embrace the reality of our mental health with the same ease as we embrace our physical health.

We speak of all the opportunities we have in the face of this pandemic, ways to better our world when we start to further ease restrictions. I firmly believe this is another one. We can do better by modeling our own reality.

Go ahead. Admit it. You're not OK.

I know you're not OK because I'm not OK either.

And that's OK.

Photo courtesy of www.redbubble.com

It's Not Remote Learning

As Vermont begins to contemplate phased steps to "return to normal," this week, St. Johnsbury returns from April vacation. I'm confident it is the oddest April vacation any of our students and families have ever experienced. I'm also reasonably sure these next two months will be the most unique two months of their educational career.

With our Continuity of Learning plan accepted by the Agency of Education, we are moving forward with the remainder of our academic year. In creating our plan, I asked our Leadership Team to consider three things: it needed to be reasonable, pragmatic, and authentic. Relationships come first in our plan. Our plan prioritizes conversations over grades. It prioritizes being kind, over being right.
We will continue to meet students and their families wherever they are.

In a conversation recently with a colleague, she mentioned a phrase that has stuck with me: "This is not remote learning, it's emergency distance teaching." The reason this resonated with me then, and still is resonating with me now is simple: it's the truth. It's so true that I don't even know what authentic remote learning looks like.

So I reached out to Jeff Renard, Director of the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative, for a sense of what it takes to reach students when you are not physically in front of them. To be a teacher for VTVLC, one must go through a ten graduate credit certificate program, which includes a final practicum class of 60 hours of student teaching with an experienced online instructor. Most cohorts take eight months to complete, and even still, from Renard's point of view, it takes three years to get comfortable with a new curriculum, a new initiative, or a new methodology.

Eight months of coursework, 60 hours of student teaching, and three years to get comfortable. That is how online learning is supposed to work. Our professionals had less than two weeks.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm incredibly proud of our Continuity of Learning Plan. It has all the elements I expected, and it has all the requirements for the Agency of Education. I continue to be awed by the greatness I see happening every day in our community. For example, without batting an eyelash, our Food Service personnel worked through their April vacation. Also, they've been asked to feed some of our homeless population staying in hotels and motels in our area.

Still, I know families are overwhelmed because my family is overwhelmed. I know teachers are working harder than ever, because they want to find creative ways to reach their students when their students are in twenty different places, instead of right in front of them. I know that students are confused because this is not how school is supposed to look. They want to see their friends, they want to play together, and they want to be with the teacher they'd seen every weekday since August.

We are all working together in good faith. We are all trying our best in light of a global health crisis. We are putting our students and their families first.

Every day we are getting better at this. We are listening to our students, we are listening to their families. We make adjustments and course correct. We are trying to encourage as much student agency as we can, given the circumstances. We want this to meet the needs of our students and their families - even from afar.

But please, make no mistake about it. This is not remote learning. It's emergency distance teaching.

There's a big difference.

Photo courtesy of www.myrye.com

The Gift of Time

In those rare occasions when a meeting I am leading ends early, I have said to those in attendance, "I'm giving you the gift of time. What are you going to do with it?" Often it's said tongue-in-cheek, as perhaps, at most, the meeting will wrap up five minutes before it was scheduled to end. In that case, grabbing a refill for a cup of coffee on the way to one's next meeting might be a reasonable option. Yet, during this time of school dismissal, we have all been granted the gift of time.

There are certain elements of this that bother me though, most notably the equity piece. For our students and their families who struggle with basic needs, this will exacerbate those needs. Even though our district is delivering meals every weekday, and there are partner programs in the Northeast Kingdom who are supporting us, we are still struggling to ensure that every child and family in need is being reached. 

In addition, broadband internet access is not widely available in the NEK, and that limits our ability to connect and communicate with some of our families. High-speed internet access in schools is as fundamental as heat, running water, and electricity. If we are going to expect our students to make progress during this time of school dismissal, those expectations must be tempered unless we can confirm the reliability of their connectivity in their homes. 

Finally, the reality of this school dismissal is that it is causing us to work harder than we would normally work - teachers and students. During virtual office hours this week, a teacher lamented to me how much easier it would be to circulate and give regular feedback on work being completed. Our communication is limited to phone calls and e-mail, and let's face it, we all see the numbers in our inbox skyrocketing. And if we can step back for a moment and reflect, there is another facet of this school dismissal. For me it is time. 

I cannot remember the last time the four people in this house ate dinner, at the table, without rushing off, this many days in a row. Typically, we have practices, games, clients, and board meetings. Or there are student exhibitions, musicals, sleepovers, and parties. In addition, we have AAU out of state tournaments, 50th birthday celebrations, vacations to visit family, and holidays to travel for. But not now. 

Now, we eat together every night. We play Texas Hold Em and Pitch. I lose to my children daily in driveway basketball. We walk five miles along with the dog. I exercise every day. We meditate as a family. I can have an uninterrupted conversation with my wife before we are both sitting in bed exhausted at the end of the day. 

Yes, this is harder. On almost every level this is harder. There are real public health concerns, we must continue to practice social distancing and cannot cheat. Even a little. 

Hopefully, we will not face this again in our lifetime. Hopefully, we learn from this experience. Hopefully, we begin to treasure the small interactions we took for granted before this started. 

I already see the growth. My boys' relationship is deepening, from the driveway basketball court to their banter watching videos together, to their workout routines in our basement. Coffee in the morning with my wife is not a luxury, it's a daily reality. Cooking together as a family is not foreign, it's an expectation. Outside of our family vacations, I don't know when I'll get this time again with all of them, like this. 

With very limited notice, we said goodbye to the routines and work schedules that defined how we spent our minutes in our days. Our worlds shrunk to the square footage in our homes, with the people who normally scatter to various places, spending all of our time together. The expectations have expanded, with legitimate questions about how to manage them equitably from a distance. And still, I return to the question I posed at the beginning: 

We've been given the gift of time. What are you going to do with it? 

Photo courtesy of Pintrest.com