I can tell you that this is a community that has persevered many times before—Superstorm Sandy for example—so they were up to the task and we remained collected throughout the spring. And then, in the summertime when we started gearing up to possibly bring everybody back, we got out there once again, asking, “Hey, would you like to be part of this massive push to get our students back into the buildings?”
eSN: But six months later you’re still stuck in remote mode.
GR: Once we got to the eleventh hour, we had to, unfortunately, start remotely, due to staffing issues and I could not guarantee the safety and health and welfare of all of our children and staff. So now we were asking, “How do you create an empathetic experience to parents and to kids in this weird virtual setting?”
Even though they had done it in the spring, kids have brand new teachers, so how do you build that relationship with them? So our first day of orientation, we held it outside and the parents came by certain scheduled times and they got to meet their teachers outside, got their materials, got Chromebooks and any assistance they needed. So it was okay face-to-face interaction. And we tried to make it as fun as we could.
eSN: How has having the teachers broadcast from their classrooms versus their kitchen tables improved the situation?
GR: I think having the connectivity and the wi-fi resources has been an exponential help to allow us to grow here. (Teachers working from home) was always a struggle last year. When all this first came to fruition, they would ask, “Can we go into the building and get something real fast?” And we were like, “No, you can’t,” because we still didn’t know what was what at that time. Now we know we can send work home and so forth on top of a Chromebook so that’s been a tremendous boost.
I also think since we’re back in a setting where we’re out of our house. We’ve taken a big step forward for our psychological safety and saying, “Okay, I’m back in a classroom setting. I know kids are coming back eventually, hopefully, sooner than later. And I can get back into my routine. I can have my room set up the way I want to be set up safely when these kids do come back.” So, you know, it’s a bunch of little wins in there
eSN: Zoom has been getting a bad rap as a teaching tool. How do you see it differently?
GR: The connections that the teachers are having with parents is greater than ever. We always used to say, “There’s lack of communication,” or “I wish I could talk to that teacher.” We have that now at our fingertips, to quickly hit a button and say, “Hey, I’m here. How’s my son doing? How’s my daughter doing?” And then you have parent-teacher conferences. Those are usually in November, and we would always say before, “If you had to wait until November to talk to your teacher, you drove something wrong.”
Now you can talk every day to that teacher, if you wanted to. And I know that’s a lot on the teacher and I know that’s a lot on the parent and I know people are trying to be understanding of that, but building that relationship is so empowering and such a positive that this has to be used for the benefit of education going forward.
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