Things We Lost In The Flood? Wellbeing Priorities In A Post-Crisis Situation

by Gudrun Bjorg Ingimundardottir

Gudrun is an international educator and school leader with experience in teaching and living on all continents except Antarctica (for now). She has degrees from universities in France, Malaysia, and the UK, and plans for many more. She is an English and French teacher at heart but is also passionate about working with other educators and leaders to move education forward for children around the world. In this blog post, she talks about the conscious decision-making that needed to be made in unprecedented circumstances at her school following a devastating natural disaster.

Google Meet vs Zoom? Cameras on or off? What about deadlines? Should students wear uniforms?

Many of you may be familiar with these questions in a way that you would ideally not revisit as this brings up memories of weeks, months, and in some cases years of remote learning that I believe many of us would rather forget, and I can confirm that I fall squarely into that camp. However, in the aftermath of some of the most devastating floods in living memory [1] left devastation and ruin in its wake in Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia, these were questions that we found ourselves faced with yet again at Prem Tinsulanonda International School.

As our extended community began taking stock of the destruction and subsequent rebuilding of lives and homes, including the very school that our boarding students and many of our teachers call home, the leadership team was faced with the additional task of making important decisions regarding the education of the students in our care, and what a new reality would look like for them in the short, medium, and long term. This did mean taking into consideration all of the questions asked here above, but what guides (and should guide) our decision-making process when designing an alternative learning program for a temporary post-crisis situation? What questions should be answered first?

I feel fortunate to belong to the strong team of leaders guiding the wellbeing team at our school, as wellbeing would come to play an important role in this decision-making process, where the following elements were identified as priorities in this process of reconstruction. 

Short-term: Consider the Needs of the Community

In the immediate aftermath of a crisis, what is the reward for the school that rushes to be the first to the finish line of re-establishing normality?

One would be hard-pressed to find a family or even a person left unaffected by the floods that brought destruction to so many lives, with fetid flood waters bursting into so many learning and communal spaces of our school, while carrying years of dreams and plans further downstream. Without needing to recount some of the traumatizing scenes that many members of our community were part of, witnessed, or returned to, it was evident that our community needed time and space to be able to take in what had happened and figure out their next steps. While it is a known fact that establishing routines and returning to known norms can help children catch their bearings in a post-crisis situation, at what cost? What value does a routine bring if it is delivered by a community that is still reeling? Putting the question of logistics aside, with many displaced teachers and families in uncertain situations and with limited access to internet or working spaces, our collective mental and physical health was given priority, and so the prospect of returning to a semblance of normal school life, albeit online, would simply have to wait. The success of our school community and our learning should not be measured by how quickly we bounce back, but by how well we look after each other as part of a gradual and thoughtful process.

Medium-term: Wellbeing and Academics, not Wellbeing vs. Academics

How can integrating wellbeing and academics as interconnected priorities strengthen a school’s culture for learning, particularly in an online learning situation?

When the time felt right to turn our attention to what an online learning program would look like, it was of vital importance for us to consider the above as we put together the building blocks for our learning provisions, and before even getting to the questions of the logistics of online learning such as Google Meet vs Zoom and so forth.

Generally speaking, we create optimal conditions for learning when students experience safety, agency, voice and choice. In a period of temporary online learning, we create conditions approximating optimal when we acknowledge this interconnection and strive to create a learning environment where students engage with school as a source of stability and connection, instead of a trigger of anxiety due to unrealistic expectations in unprecedented circumstances. It meant we defined our approach to education along the following lines:

  • Our school is a source of stability, not compliance: This meant a synchronous schedule, but one that provided the opportunity for students to engage asynchronously as well, while ensuring that students had the chance to check in with teachers who were happy and ready to see them in lessons.
  • Our school provides custom-made approaches to learning to honour different circumstances and learning needs: Students were provided with a choice of activities for every lesson that suited their readiness for learning, and given the flexibility and support from their teachers to do so, as mentioned here above. This meant base and extension activities, and a choice of ways in which to complete them. Students were given feedback on their learning, but grades and formal evaluations were put on hold.
  • Our school considers attendance as community building, and not the opposite of truancy: Attendance was recorded, but as a tool to track wellbeing and potential concerns. Grade 11 and Grade 12 were surveyed every day in the first week to measure their readiness for learning, and the wellbeing team reached out to families where potential concerns were raised. Further into the online learning process, this process was extended to all students in the Senior School, with wellbeing checks regularly carried out by school counsellors, student support team, and other members of the wellbeing team. 

We recognise that this may not be applicable in situations where online learning is required for longer periods of time, but in a temporary situation such as this one, we made the conscious decision to define our education provision from the perspective of wellbeing and community building, and thus embrace what makes us a school, and not a collection of passive consumers of learning content. 

Long-term: Appreciate and Acknowledge All Learning

How narrowly or broadly do we wish to define “lost learning” following a period of remote learning under adverse circumstances? How does this definition align with our school values?

When we return to school after this interim period of online learning, we know that we will be welcoming back students who have engaged with it to a varying extent, and some even not at all, and that is okay. This means that instead of focusing on how we can make up for the lost learning, we should be thinking about how we can celebrate all the other kinds of learning that took place during that time.

Our school is truly lucky to be able to open its doors to a diverse range of students, who come from different family and cultural backgrounds, which adds richness to the intricate tapestry of our school community. Combining this with the fact that most of our students would be either directly or indirectly affected by these adverse weather events, we knew that many students would be engaging (or not) with the temporary transition to online learning in a variety of ways that depended on many factors related to the above. When checking in with our students during this period, they reported spending more time with family, supporting reconstruction efforts, volunteering with their community, and even getting more sleep in some instances, which many senior students report is a rarity in the final stretches of their secondary education. 

Such experiences may bring valuable lessons in resilience, empathy, self-management, and countless other skills that contribute towards the development of a rounded human being, that an online learning environment, however well designed, may not always be able to provide, and this should be valued and promoted, instead of considered lost learning when it comes to assessments and other means of quantifying learning. After all, is it not so that not everything that is measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured? Should lessons in the more traditional sense be considered the sole provider of learning experiences in a learning community at a school such as ours?

Summary

In short, the questions that brought back the memories of the pandemic were asked and eventually answered, but as part of a holistic decision-making process that considered wellbeing as a central priority for learning, and not as a separate initiative or afterthought.   As outlined in the LYIS Impact Framework for International School Leaders, it is our responsibility as leaders to seek first to understand others and our learning needs before decisions about the organisation of learning are made, and so we asked the most important questions first and answered them in line with our philosophy and values, which provided answers for most other questions as a matter of course.

We have months, and possibly even years, of rebuilding ahead of us, but we enter this process as a community, strengthened by our support for each other, and our vision for education, where we define ourselves by how well we looked after those in our care, and celebrated everyone’s contributions to a collective pursuit for compassionate and committed learning.

Gudrun Bjorg Ingimundardottir is the Senior School Assistant Principal for Wellbeing, Prem Tinsulanonda International School, Thailand.

Reference: [1] https://apnews.com/article/chiang-mai-tourism-weather-0d0391104d14db25c4d4c6cd73280f29

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