“In one day, the rug was pulled out from under the teachers’ feet. They suddenly had to reinvent themselves overnight with no training, and essentially forget everything they’d learned“.
I’ve been managing the school for four years now and over that time, we’ve made great changes to empower and train our teachers. We created pedagogical programs, sent them to continued education programs abroad and really invested in every aspect of the school. Our view is that if teachers don’t change their personal habits of their own volition, no external force will make them change.
These are the insights I had when COVID-19 began. We decided to work hard on empowering our staff, based on the assumption that by empowering our teachers, we would be doing the same for our students.
We worked with them on the basis of four guiding principles. First of all, we kept their routines going – we decided to continue as usual.
We gave them emotional, material and social support. For example, I personally came to each of their homes to give each teacher his or her own computer. We scheduled our meetings at times that were comfortable for them and created personal programs to demonstrate that we see them and think about them.
On the professional side, we gave them responsibility and encouraged their entrepreneurial spirit. We put together work groups to support teacher-led initiatives and offered teachers the opportunity to participate in the initiatives that were of interest to them. This resulted in many work groups being created voluntarily, from one day to the next.
The technological gap became very clear to us during the crisis, requiring special attention. We discovered a huge disparity between teachers: some of them had previous experience and adapted very smoothly. But others were really frustrated with the technological challenges. One teacher experienced a deep crisis resulting from the fear of teaching from home. One of the ways we dealt with the technological challenge was through an environment of sharing. Whenever a teacher found a new feature on Zoom or a new and interesting technological way to teach, he or she would immediately share it with the rest of the faculty and help the rest of us. Today we have a very strong team full of initiative. And most importantly – we managed to bring a great deal of happiness into the teachers’ lives. These are not simple times and the challenges continue, but after nine months, we’re finally feeling optimistic.”