2020 represents a stunning shift in educational practices and expectations around the world.  We will have to wait to see what the long term impact of COVID-19 will be on our education systems at a large scale, and whether those shifts are wholly positive or negative.  While only time will reveal the collective impact on the education of our kids, we all have plenty of evidence at the personal and local level that the disruption has been significant.  

Within just my family – a family of teachers – the impacts have been felt in interesting ways.  My younger sister, who lives in rural New England and who left regular employment as a classroom-based Waldorf teacher a couple of years ago in order to take care of a newborn, decided to launch a distance learning Waldorf classroom.  She teaches over a dozen students virtually from all around the United States and the world.  Suddenly, geographic distance is no longer a barrier.  While the demands of balancing family and professional life have not gone away, the fact that my sister can stay at home and work as a “classroom teacher” has been a game-changer allowing her back into the profession in a truly unexpected manner.  

My older sister too has “returned to the classroom” this year.  Her last foray as a public school teacher was literally 20 years ago, when she too left as a young mother.  When she returned to full-time work several years ago, it was in the private sector, developing music curriculum and organizing private music education for small groups of students as an after-school enrichment activity.  The pandemic and consequent restructuring of her work led her back into the public sector, where she is loving her new role as an elementary music and art teacher, albeit at a distance.  Suddenly, her days are filled by preparing standards-aligned instruction and popping from classroom to classroom, all from her living room.  

My mom, who went back to school about 10 years ago to receive her bachelor’s in education and continue her own journey as a licensed Waldorf kindergarten teacher, has been making the transition from in-person classes to distance learning.  Those with young children (or who teach young children) know that the pandemic has been especially hard for our youngest learners, for whom distance learning simply is not the ideal.  Yet, despite the challenges, my mom has been eagerly and tirelessly finding ways to connect to her young students.  Distance learning has forced my mom, and millions of other regular classroom teachers, to rethink how they structure their classroom, connect with students, and create opportunities for meaningful and powerful learning.      

One of the strangest professional experiences for me has been transitioning to a new leaderhip role in the depths of the pandemic.  For 7 weeks, I found myself leading an international school in Costa Rica while on the road all across the Western United States, doing my best to balance the logistics of traveling with a family of 8, and focusing on building new relationships with my new school community.  We thankfully received special permission to make the trip to Costa Rica, thanks in large part to the herculean effort of our school board and staff.  Yet even so, we remain in quarantine until the end of this week, and nearly a month into the school year, I still have yet to physically step foot on our campus.  

7 months ago, things looked very different for the educators of the Allen family.  What a strange, challenging, and sometimes even exciting world we seem to be living in.  

Educators have always known how critical it is to deeply involve parents and families in the education of children.  Whether it was our board president in Santa Ana reminding us all that “parents are our secret sauce,” or the common refrain amongst educators that “parents are students’ first teachers,” there is a common understanding that parent involvement is critical to the educational process of our students.  Yet in the context of a busy school year, parent engagement can creep down the list of priorities.    

The pandemic has brought parents back into the equation in a powerful way.  Of course many parents, myself included, have felt overwhelmed at times with the amount of attention and time required to support the learning of our own kids – especially for our youngest learners, for whom distance learning can pose a real challenge.  Yet despite the challenges, parents around the world have been invited to be involved in new and powerful ways. 

For example, at the Lincoln School, our preschool and elementary teachers have held individualized meetings with every student and family during the week leading up to the first day of school.  This personalized attention gave students the opportunity to introduce family members (and pets) to the teacher, show them their personal work spaces, and strengthen the teacher/student relationship.  While new students at the school have always enjoyed a personal evaluation and intake interview, this year was the first year that every student and parent had the chance to connect individually with their teacher. 

Similarly, Lincoln has offered a number of virtual parent orientation meetings and welcome back to school events during the weeks leading up to school starting.  While these types of meetings had been offered in past years at the school, staff unanimously reported that attendance at the virtual meetings was much higher than it had been for in-person events in past years.  One of our directors commented that even when physical classes resume, she plans to continue with virtual parent meeting options to make it easier for some parents to participate.

Most importantly, when students are learning at home, teachers become increasingly dependent on parents to provide structure and support for the learning.  In this sense, schools have finally come to see parents as full partners in the successful learning of our students.  We increasingly rely on parents for feedback about the effectiveness of our distance learning efforts.  At Lincoln, for example, our preschool and kindergarten parents shared a number of concerns about how school was structured during the previous semester, and offered suggestions for how it could be more successful.  We listened, and the dialogue has led to improvements. 

Undoubtedly, as we navigate another semester of distance learning together, the two-way dialogue will be critical for ensuring that we are reaching every student.  Of course, we will make mistakes.  Both parenting and teaching are deeply human endeavors that require constant reflection and renewed efforts to try again.   While the challenges are very real – for both parents and educators – there perhaps has never been a stronger shared commitment to work together to make the best of it for the benefit of our kids. 

Our leadership theme at Lincoln School for the 2020-21 school year is #LeadingForward.  The idea came from members of the team who were trying to capture the idea that we cannot wait around for life to normalize.  As we have all experienced, life goes on, even in the midst of a pandemic.  Instead of focusing intently and solely on “coming back” and “returning to normal,” we are encouraging one another and our students to consider ways that we can move forward in the current context with purpose.  

Even before the pandemic hit, Lincoln was in the midst of a transformation.  The school has been busy integrating concepts of entreprenuerial thinking and social innovation across the curriculum, from preschool to seniors.  These concepts draw on Babson College’s principles of Entrepreneurial Thought & Action, which equip students to identify problems around them, deepen their understanding of these problems, and then engage in a design process to develop creative solutions to address the challenges.  #LeadingForward means continuing to encourage students to test out these emerging skills.  

A perfect example of that is in students’ Creativity, Advocacy, & Service (CAS) projects.  CAS is a well-known element of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme, and requires each student during their junior and senior year to provide evidence of their efforts to make meaningful contributions to the society around them.  Many, if not most, of students’ CAS projects have come in the way of volunteering time and service hours.  Many of the traditional modes of service and volunteering are not currently available.  This will require students to ask themselves some new questions – how can I make a contribution given the current situation?  What skills do I already have or will I need to develop in order to make a contribution?  How can I create value for organizations and initiatives that are struggling themselves to carry out their services during a pandemic?  None of these questions have easy answers, just as our current life situation does not have easy solutions.  #LeadingForward means applying the best of our creative and generative minds to create value in the lives of people around us.  

I think #LeadingForward also means enthusiastically learning new skills.  The entire education profession is currently experiencing a quantum leap forward in terms of equipping teachers and staff with new pedagogical tools and skills.  Of course, this is not to say that virtual learning and its related strategies are always the best learning option under any circumstances or conditions.  Ask anyone with a preschool student and they will quickly remind you otherwise.  Yet even with the limitations of the virtual environment, professional educators are learning in powerful new ways, borne out of the necessity of a pandemic.  Here again, we see the application of entrepreneurial thinking and mindsets, as teachers identify challenges in how the connect with students, deliver instruction, and encourage new learning.  Learning new software platforms is a good start, but perhaps falls short of rethinking pedagogy and designing creative solutions.  I’ve seen teacher teams develop new norms for small group instruction, student collaboration, curriculum development, and blending of synchronous and asynchronous learning.  Feedback from our parents, for example, inspired our preschool teachers to develop new schedules, with shorter teleconference chunks for checking-in and providing workshop lessons, followed by more frequent gaps for students to play and explore.  

#LeadingForward also means insisting on new ways to balance work, life, and study.  I imagine we have all felt the encroachment of the digital environment on our day to day lives and work calendars.  As leaders, we have to take ownership of those calendars and be deliberate in our daily practices, reminding ourselves daily to unplug and turn off the noise.  We need to find opportunities to get outside, medidate, & pray.  We need to encourage those around us to do the same.  I always greatly appreciated when our superintendent in Santa Ana, Jerry Almendarez, would remind the leadership team to take care of themselves.  Of course we all know we need to take care of ourselves, but when an organizational leader or a teacher reminds us to do it, it’s easier to give ourselves permission to actually do it.  

Above all, #LeadingForward is about adopting a curious and optimistic mindset, one that chooses to find solutions and new opportunities in the midst of life’s very real challenges.  All of us have choices to make, psychological choices, about how we will react and move through the uncertainty.  Of course, we don’t make light of the very real challenges and loss so many people around the world are facing – especially the most economically and socially vulnerable.  Yet, with privilege comes responsibility, and it is perhaps especially during a crisis when we must act on what is within our control to make life better for others.  

First thing this morning, at 6:50 am Pacific time, I joined with nearly 500 high school students for the opening session of the 2020-21 school year.  For the first time in my professional life, I spent the first day of school at home.  Okay, to be honest, it’s not even technically home.  I’m at my in-laws house waiting to make the physical move to Costa Rica later this month.  Regardless, I wasn’t at school, and for an educator, that’s an unheard of way to start the year.  I’m sure our students felt similarly out of place, dressed in their school uniform shirts, planted in front of a computer screen in their living rooms.  Not exactly the way they envisioned beginning this year of high school.  

Yet despite the physical distance, I could sense an incredible amount of energy and enthusiasm to be back together.  There is something about the start of a school year that transcends the current pandemic.  It is one of those human experiences, shared across the globe, that simply has to go on.  While the mechanism for bringing our students and teachers together has changed, there was still excitement and anticipation to reconnect.  

At my house, my own kids are gearing up for a new school year with anticipation.  Last night, I sat with my 11 year old daughter, who will be starting middle school.  I was helping her get the apps downloaded and tech set-up to access her orientation sessions and classes. She was excited to preview her schedule and see how she would access all of her courses.  Then, she noticed a classmate had sent her a message – a simple introduction and invitation to connect.  She was elated.  Her first comment to her younger brother was that school hadn’t even started and she had made a new friend.  Her excitement for a new school year with new possibilities was palpable.  

I’ve similarly watched behind the scenes as our staff at Lincoln has been working hard to prepare for the launch of school.  They have participated in countless teleconference calls, distance learning & software Q&A sessions, and asyncronous workshop sessions, all in the spirit of improving their ability to engage students virtually.  Great teachers thrive off of the energy of students, and our staff has been seeking out ways to better connect with our students, recognizing that the foundation of powerful and personalized learning is always quality relationships.  

I guess setting out from the shore into turbulent waters has always been an exciting but nervous endeavor for us human beings.  You could see that mix of emotions this morning in our students’ and staff’s faces.  The prevailing sentiment of the meeting was an acknowledgement that yes, this is a strange way to start a school year, but also a commitment to give it our best.  I appreciated the comment made by Scott Garren, our high school principal, that we will all have to be a little more forgiving of one another as we navigate the highly uncertain but certainly memorable waters of 2020-21.  

Yes, school is about academic training and the development of skills and abilities.  But it is also about our very human need to connect to others, build friendships, and experience life together.  Our back to school meeting this morning was a powerful reminder, especially during a pandemic, that we need school.