[This is adapted from a much longer address to teachers in final days where they are permitted on campus, immediately after the spring break just before the mandatory campus closures]
So we need to use these two days before campus closure well. The rest of today will be looking in detail at the tasks at hand; and it’s critically important. But before we get there, it’s also important that we can contextualise these tasks in a broader trajectory. This is very difficult to do at the moment, when we are in the thick of it. There is no question that what is happening is of global significance; historians will talk about these days; and in future when we talk with our children and grandchildren we'll say “do you remember that time when…?” just as our own parents and grandparents probably do with us about events from our own yesterdays. Individuals and family lives are changing; perhaps societies and the human world overall will change in significant ways. That is why all this is so unsettling; it’s not just the health risk but the overall uncertainty about so much.
We can name that for what it is; identifying it makes it easier to deal with. For us, as always, we can think about and focus on what is in our control. It is old, old wisdom that we never lose choice about who we are, who we want to be. Reminding ourselves of that will ground us, and give us the mental framing we need, so we can be who we need to be in order to help our students to frame these events for themselves, and to be the people they want to be, and need to be.
So just at the time when we might let stress-fight-flight-fright reactions shut us down, and narrow our focus, we need to open up, and broaden. This is a familiar idea that we have come across many times before. So though these are questions of a lifetime, they are also questions for this moment: To what do we hold true? What are our values and our mental models? And across the coming days, let’s help us all answer as educators, colleagues, partners, parents, sons, daughters. Let’s stay open, kind and compassionate and connected. Poet Kahil Gibran wrote work is love made visible decades ago. For us teachers globally, it is as true now as it has ever been, especially in relation to some of our needier students today.
If that can be the lens through which we filter coming events, and coming remote lessons, then we can take the opportunity to help the young adults who are in our care, and who may be struggling, to process and get through this. And perhaps by helping them, it’ll also be how we also process it, and how we also will get through this.
This graphic has been circulating on twitter; it starts with the eternal question who do I want to be? and as I have been thinking about it, the ambitions for growth are ones that have stayed with me.
The statements are challenging ones - about what to avoid, and what to aspire to. Please take a moment to read them slowly, one by one, and to reflect on them. This is a good tool for us as individuals, for our teams, our students and their families. I intend to return to it often in the coming days.
The statements will help us remember that this is not business as usual; and not to forget the emotional and psychological impact of this crisis. NZ Principal Perry Rush has written: Our job at this time is to infuse any home learning plan with a deep sense of humanity. Technology is not a pedagogy. It is an enabler and provides an opportunity for us to connect to our students and them to each other. This is about more than us as teachers, therefore, it is about us all as people. Looking around, this should fill us all with great confidence.
I hope and trust we can meet face to face again in the not too distant future. Thank you everyone, and good luck to you all; look after yourselves, your families and your students.
Reference
- Gibran, K (1923) On Work
- Rush, P. (20202) President's Message New Zealand Principals' Federation
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