From the Head of School

 

A New Way of Working

I was set up with  my first work email account in 2003 when I had already been teaching for several years.  A colleague, head of IT amongst several other roles (IT not being big enough for its own remit), announced it in a staff meeting; the next day I found a slip of paper in my pigeon hole with my new username and password.  

Two months later that same colleague popped by to see if my email was working.  ‘Ah yes,’ I admitted, ‘I completely forgot about it.’  I had lost my login details, so he accompanied me down to the computer lab to help me get started.  I had two emails: one asking me to confirm my account; the other, a month later, asking me if I ever checked my email.

Two digital communications in two months.  That would be unthinkable now.  Our workplaces were transformed between the beginning of this century and 2020, and have gone into hyperdrive in the year since then.

The real significance of this change is not so much in the new tools - learning to type emails rather than write memos - but in the culture and structure of the working day.  Separate spheres of life have begun to merge.  The late twentieth century norm was to have a set of clothes for sleeping in (pyjamas), another for working in (a suit or school uniform) and a third for leisure (jeans and a t-shirt).  We slept at home, worked in the office or school, and went to the pub, theatre or cinema for leisure, all of which were done in their allotted times.

Email, social media and portable computers were the first assault on these separate spheres, with both the possibility of keeping in touch with work during evenings and weekends, and in keeping up with our social lives through facebook while at work.  

During lockdown, these separate spheres have been in danger of collapsing into each other entirely.  Because we are not leaving home to go to work, it is tempting to work in pyjamas or get things done as and when, abandoning routines.  

Some may welcome the greater flexibility; and indeed there is a benefit, on a short January day, in being able to go for a long walk while it is light, and to push work to the dark evening.  But there is also a danger that we start to lose balance in our lives, of  feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities in any given moment.

Ever since we first  introduced virtual school last March, ISA  aimed to keep routines - students would regularly meet, and wouldn’t just complete work as and when.  We have built in flexibility around this - through our Wellness Wednesdays for example - but always remembering that we all work best with clear expectations - separate spheres.  

It is worth reminding ourselves of some of the structures for virtual school that make learning more effective. If you go to the Community Hub and scroll down past the calendar, you get to a ‘Virtual School’ section which contains links to all kinds of advice with specific guidance for Preschool families, Kindergarten to Grade 5 students and their families, and Middle High School students and their families.  

We have  come a long way since the first email.  Right now, school’s  physical and temporal spaces are divided between home and online teachers.  Education has always been a partnership between parents and teachers.  This is the case now more than ever, as we learn to apply our principles and values not just to new technologies, but whole new realities.

If you do have concerns about how virtual school is working, send me an email (I check them far more regularly now than I did in 2003, I promise) or pop into ‘Virtual Coffee with the Head of School’ on a Friday morning at 10pm.  We’ll work it out!