Leadership Learnings during Covid-19
The current global crisis has seen school principals and leaders respond with creativity, ingenuity and innovation in order to keep our schools a place of learning, of creativity and of community. Our principals and school leaders have been guided by our nation’s leaders in responding to the challenges that COVID-19 has presented. However, each school community has been given autonomy to make decisions – decisions that meet the needs of each of our unique communities.
Here are some of the wonderful ways our Educate Plus member schools have faced these times of uncertainty and focussed on maintaining our wonderful learning communities, to keep our students, teachers and parents connected, and to help build the resilience that we need to overcome the obstacles and challenges that life throws at us.
Andrew Powell, Ascham’s Head of School, praised the School’s Dalton Plan for preparing their community to face the challenges of remote learning.
‘Treating setbacks as opportunities to learn is strongly embedded in our culture and is complemented by the Dalton Plan’s teaching philosophy, which focuses on collaboration, responsibility, reflection and independence. This philosophy has been particularly helpful in ensuring our girls transitioned into remote learning quickly …[allowing] our Dalton Plan to come into its own this year.’
Complementing Ascham’s Remote Learning Plan (RLP) is their Wellbeing@Home program, which was embedded into the RLP and was a natural extension of the School’s extensive wellbeing activities that occur every day on campus, year-round. Andrew Powell said that the launch of the program was, ‘in keeping with our School values-the sense of community and collaboration has been overwhelming.’ The Wellbeing@Home program was built around the School’s nine core values, most importantly the four of courage, resilience, ambition and kindness. Ascham drew on the latest evidence and research to ensure the program supported its students throughout what was a changing and dynamic time.
All aspects of Ascham School pivoted quickly and very successfully to virtual offerings, including community service, co-curricular activities, sports coaching and even parent/teacher interviews.
COVID-19 has opened the door to a vast array of innovative teaching and learning approaches at Ascham. The School has reimagined so much, and delivered programs and activities in ways that may soon become the norm-as many of the changes have been embraced and offer new ways for their community to learn, live and work together.
Canberra Grammar School
Canberra Grammar School – like many schools – was required to very quickly adjust to the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, which started at the end of Term 1. As the impact of COVID-19 on schooling became clearer, CGS quickly organised a response team, bringing together the Whole School Leadership Team, Risk and Compliance, Education Technology, and Communications to prepare a plan that would see the roll-out of remote learning to more than 2,000 students, while still providing on-campus support to the children of essential workers, or for those who could not learn at home.
Focusing on creating a simple-as-possible pathway to remote learning, our student and learning portal – which had just undergone a complete transition to a new platform – was adjusted to create a central space for remote learning and resources, along with subject areas adjusting to create modified content. In addition to the remote learning resources, CGS utilised video conferencing software to deliver interactive and classroom-like lessons. The School was also in the fortunate position to have tested remote learning methods with students who were unable to learn on-campus at previous stages.
From a teacher’s perspective, the professional learning in subject delivery was vital as it upskilled teachers in a short time, and allowed teachers to continue to deliver on educational outcomes, while working towards making lessons concise.
While only so much can be achieved in a short time, with the support of teachers, operational staff, students, and parents the School was able to meet its academic and community outcomes by delivering a remote learning program that kept students engaged and learning. However, we are pleased to be delivering on-campus learning again and engaged in the personal qualities, interactions and soft-skills that create the best environment for our community.
While looking at content delivery through remote learning, CGS also took the opportunity to reflect on the curriculum, co-curricular program, and events and activities and consider what process of simplification the School might undergo to refine its offerings and operations post COVID-19.
Kincoppal’s Courage and Confidence
Principal Maureen Ryan said, ‘As we begin Term 2, Madeleine Sophie Barat’s words “Courage and Confidence – even to moving mountains if need be!” really come to mind. As a School we have adapted, and found flexible, creative solutions to deal with the challenges of COVID-19…Teachers have reacted positively and with resilience to these challenges. They are now constantly seeking new methods to deal with the changed learning environment and to cater for students with different needs, from Kindergarten to Year 12…All teachers have embarked on a steep technological learning curve.’
PLC Sydney’s Power Up Wednesday’s
In Term 2 PLC was mixing things up a little with the introduction of POWER UP WEDNESDAYS! For Years 7-10 this means undertaking a series of creative and engaging projects such as the Balance and Fitness Carnival, Living History Project and Portraits in Isolation.
Pymble Ladies’ College Gives Back
Pymble’s response to COVID-19 included practical outreach activities ‘to keep the community feeling connected during a time when people had never felt more apart’, according to Pymble Ladies’ College Principal, Dr Kate Hadwen.
Activities in the Pymble Gives Back program included students sending videos and letters to residents in aged care facilities, sewing fabric hearts to comfort newborn babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Westmead Hospital, knitting squares to turn into blankets for the Wrap with Love charity, becoming an online reading buddy to support younger students practising their reading and volunteering for wheelie bin duty for the disabled and elderly. Students, staff, parents and alumni also kept in touch with the community by cooking meals and delivering donations of supplies to women’s shelters across Sydney, feeding an incredible seven shelters thanks to deliveries three times per week.
Out of the kitchen, in response to reports of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages for Australian healthcare workers, Pymble IT and TAS staff put their 3D machines to good use by producing up to 30 face shields per day.
‘At Pymble, we were certainly all in this together,’ Dr Hadwen said. ‘It takes a team effort to stay connected – and our students and our staff were very much up to the task.’
Santa Sabina’s Santa Strong
The Santa Strong program was introduced in Phase Two of the Remote Learning Plan. The enhanced experience ensures that the students are connected, energised and engaged through virtual weekly assemblies and community activities, music including a virtual wholeschool choir, wellness, spirituality, co- curricular activities, enrichment, physical and cultural activities. An extra period has been added to the timetable to provide students with an important time to be active, creative and connected. College Principal Paulina Skerman said, ‘We recognise that student wellbeing during this time must be a priority. These sessions are designed with wellness in mind and never has this been more important.’
St Andrew’s Cathedral School ‘test and learn’ approach
St Andrew’s Cathedral School adopted a ‘test and learn’ based approach to managing our transition to online learning.
Teaching staff were given the opportunity to ‘test’ systems, approaches, practice and connection with various year groups, returning for whole school and faculty reflection sessions, before the call was made for whole-school remote learning. This enabled teachers to collaborate, test, share evidence and practice with their peers before remote learning was a reality. Wellbeing programs and a concentration on connecting whilst isolated were then able to be given focus, once students were off-site.
St Joseph’s College – Off-Site Learning Plan
Director of Teaching and Learning, Mr Matt Bookallil, states “Well before COVID-19 and the implementation of the Off-Site Learning Plan, there was a lot of conversation in education about catering for each of the different types of learners, the upskilling of teachers and the uptake of new technologies. The personalisation of learning off-site has put us in a better position to cater for those different types of learners, and begin to address the questions about education from a unique perspective.”
As a collaborative community of advancement professionals, Educate Plus allows us all to learn from each other, network and connect in order to help our communities particularly during unprecedented times.
Wenona’s Athenaeum Learning Pathway
Wenona named its Distance Learning Program the Greek goddess of wisdom and courage – Athena. They said, ‘And when this is all over, the hope is that the Athenaeum Learning Pathway will be an option for students who are in hospital, or chronically ill, or caring for others, or are mums, or are taking Pathways or Life Skills or studying university courses while still in School, or are elite athletes training extensively and competing internationally, or live remotely or in another country, or wish to accelerate years ahead of their chronological age.’
